


The Arrangement

by DemelzaLalondrelle



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: AU Arendelle, Agdar, Arranged Marriage, Dangerous Arendelle, F/M, Gen, Historical References, Humour, Quite friendly Southern Isles, ironic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 45,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemelzaLalondrelle/pseuds/DemelzaLalondrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arranged Marriage between Arendelle & the Southern Isles, helpful to fostering industrial development, trade, good relations between nations ... and perhaps Elsa's control over the powers which frankly terrify her parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Going On

“Well there’s obviously something going on,” his mother, Her Serene Majesty Queen Augusta of the Southern Isles and Duchess of Angeborgstein had said, on receipt of the letter. It bore the Royal Seal of Arendelle and contained a flatteringly generous offer of marriage for one of their sons to the Crown Princess. 

He had heard rumours – that the girl was a creature of repulsive hideousness and deformity – that she was afflicted with an unspeakable malady, not expected to survive her twentieth year; that she was so mad, twitching and shrieking and drooling, she could not present even the briefest appearance of normality for the shortest period of time.

All were shrugged off; she brought a kingdom with her. The country would benefit from the connection, he himself would be a Prince Consort at worst; at best a King. The contract held only certain good for himself; he would be ceded certain estates and titles and stipends irrevocably; the marriage would establish him as independent, perhaps even a political player, even in the event of her death, or the failure of the marriage to produce an heir; though the ceremony would be solemnised shortly after her arrival, consummation was very specifically forbidden until the Princess reached eighteen years. At the time of her proxy marriage to Hans Westergard, Prince of the Southern Isles, Elsa, Crown Princess and Heir Apparent to the throne of Arendelle, was fourteen years old.

Her arrival in court did not follow until nearly a year later, a year marked with contracts and trade and industrial and development agreements and endless meetings between many different royals and ambassadors, though not the principals in the marriage that was the root of this flurry of business and growth. Queen Augusta was delighted with the King and Queen of Arendelle, reported that both princesses were remarkably pretty little things, well-mannered and highly educated, perhaps a little naïve, but charming. 

Elsa of Arendelle arrived in the summer, with half a dozen attendants and double that number of trunks, though none of either travelled with her in her cabin or her coach. The Princess, it seemed, looked after herself.

The Prince felt some annoyance on her behalf; serving Royalty was an exceptionally light kind of duty where nobody required any actual attendance. A Princess who washed herself, picked out her own clothes, arranged her own hair – those servants were, he surmised darkly, taking advantage. They’d have her lighting her own fires and doing her own linens next. He resolved to bring it up with his mother. Autocratic and often too self-endeared to show interest in her children in any way that wasn’t micro-managing, controlling and usually condemnatory, the Queen would not tolerate nonsense of the lazy servant sort for a moment.

The Crown Princess was announced in the salon of the court late in the afternoon, as the sun glowed low and gold through the lattices, slanting dusty shafts of light across the room and casting glows of lace around the dresses and into the jewels of the ladies. A sussuration of fans rested, a woof and rustle of skirts moving slow and curtseying shallow; a slight, strictly upright figure in a ghost pale gown stepped through the archway. The indifference of her staff had not robbed her of any charm of appearance; her hair was tastefully and neatly coiffed, her clothes immaculate, her jewels discreet but expensive. She had the spectacular colouring of the Northern Isles, blindingly fair of hair and skin, eyes as blue as Nordic skies and so large they gave the impression almost of melting.

A murmur of wonder and appreciation indicated the first impression she made; Hans himself wondered if her beauty had frightened her parents into keeping her so well hidden. Even in an age of reason, of progress and mechanical developments and politics, it was possible to picture wars fought over such a beauty, allied to such an inheritance.

She sank into a deep curtsey at the foot of the dais before their Majesties, head modestly bowed.

“Welcome to the Court of the Southern Isles, child,” smiled Queen Augusta. “We are pleased to see you here. We will introduce you to Prince Hans, your husband – I’m afraid he looks just like several of the others, but I daresay he knows which one he is, and will keep telling you until you learn to tell him apart. – Prince Hans.”

He stepped forward, taking the tiny hand she held out and courteously kissing the back of her glove. He retained it in his own as he looked up into her face. She attempted to mask her fear with a smile, and he felt a dart of feeling so swift and pure it was nearly a stab wound. I will not allow any harm to come to the princess, he thought. My princess. 

He smiled at her.

“None of the rumours that have reached us has given any true notion of your beauty. I believe I must be the most fortunate prince alive, to be given such loveliness even before I even had to court her.” 

He had intended to be gentle; the awkward intensity of her response showed plainly that she had never been paid a compliment before. She seemed to tighten, her face coloured a little, before she took a breath and replied.

“Surely I am the most fortunate princess, to be destined for a prince so courteous.” He gazed at her, his smile steady; intelligent, well-bred, beautiful. Isolated. Maligned. Never praised. 

She was a counter, a pawn in some larger game. He would bet on her parents – the same his mother found so delightful – hoping for some early demise, here in a foreign land, far away from where they might be reproached; he would bet on her sister, as yet only twelve, being the favourite for the throne of their kingdom. But if that was what they wanted, they should not have married her to him. Much of what she offered he already had, as part of the contract he had never seen, but heard so much about, but the pick of it was still the kingdom, and he would play for the whole if he could. And she was his, now - his little queen-in-waiting – and he liked her. In the time it took to kiss her hand and exchange two sentences, he had moved from his sense of duty to his parents and his country to a sense of duty to her. He would protect her – from any and all difficulties and problems – at any price and until death.

He drew her hand under his arm and bowed briefly to his parents. “With your permission, your Majesties, I will will show her Highness the gardens. After her travels I am sure she will welcome the fresh air.”

Her hand squeezed his inner elbow in a little convulsion – whether of fear or gratitude he couldn’t tell, but he was sure this poor over-dignified waif needed somebody to calm her if she was not to snap with nervous tension. He could feel her shaking.

At the doorway she hung back, abruptly heavy on his arm, whispering “I can’t go – out in the sun.” He looked at her. Once again, her face was a rictus of fear, determination pinching her forehead. 

“Of course not,” he agreed. Inside for seven years, she would crisp up like a sugar pastry. “We will go along the cloisters. – Was the journey difficult?”

“I have nothing to compare it with. It seemed – straightforward.”

“I meant – were you well? I hope you were not affected by the ship or the coaches.” She shook her head.

“I am very healthy.” She made it sound a subject of regret, making him smile again. He paused, stopped and turned to face her. 

“I was sincere when I complimented your beauty. I know I am not alone in perceiving it.” She looked at him with an expression of confusion. “You will be very much the centre of attention here. A new face, a beauty, a crown princess – others will pay you far more elegant compliments.” Her face was burning with blushes. “Do you find it hard to be admired for your appearance?”

“It is not a very important thing,” she replied. “But – I have never been admired for anything before.” Of course not, he thought. You have never met anybody.

“But now you will be. And you will be courted.”

“By you?” Her eyes were huge with astonishment.

“Among others, I fear. I may have to stand at the back of a very large crowd.”

“But you are my husband,” she replied, clearly still a little confused.

“Yes. All I wish you to know is that if anyone insults or – perturbs you with their attentions, I will stop them. I only ask that you tell me; I beg you to believe that I will do everything I can to spare you any embarrassment or unhappiness.”

“You mean – you think men will – try to – “ He nodded. “But what if somebody says that it was my fault? That I encouraged – or started –“

“I will believe you.”

“Why? You don’t know me at all.”

“But you blush very convincingly for a seasoned liar. I shall take the risk.” She glanced up at him, shot him a smile like a shaft of sunlight between leaves – 

“But what if it’s you?”

“If I ever make you uncomfortable, you must tell me.” She nodded, staring at the floor. Then turned her face back to him, smiling again.

“I think – I find you very handsome too.”

“You’re very kind to say so. Now that we are so very pleased with ourselves, should we kiss?” She pulled back from him, startled, scared. “I have already kissed you, of course.”

“Oh – “ she said. She put out her hand, doubtfully, and he kissed it again. Looking up at her as he straightened up he saw her other hand pressed to her cheek as if for comfort, but she met his gaze and dropped her hand so that she could use both her hands to hold his as she drooped forward, lashes downcast, and kissed his hand back. And of course, he did not mean to think it, and did not dwell for any time at all on something so deeply reprehensible, but an appalling, delicious idea of how it might feel to be kissed with this single-minded concentration of gratitude on any or all other parts of his body blindsided him. It was such an intense idea he lost a moment of time, and had to consciously rearrange his countenance before she straightened up again and looked at him. His voice was still a half-octave lower and almost purring when he next spoke.

“Well, don’t let me catch you doing that with anybody else.” 

Her eyes widened and her shook her head. And God, there she was – the loveliest Crown Princess in Europe, bought and paid for with less than ten minutes kindness. He really was the most fortunate prince alive.

And his mother was right, there was obviously something going on.


	2. Sentimental Education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gambling, Lechery & Lies

As Hans had predicted, the new Princess took very well. She might almost be said to bloom over the following months; shy she might be, but she wholeheartedly embraced her responsibility to be seen and to be receptive to ideas and requests like a Royal should, and Hans was always at her elbow, because he had seen her fear and knew that court could be cruel if it sensed weakness, and she was certainly a little socially fragile. She was unusually serious minded for the court of the Southern Isles, but she tempered this shortcoming with her prettiness, her politeness and flashes of humour. Her clothes seemed rather modest, which endeared her to the older women because they thought it reflected her true nature, and to the younger ones as it convinced them that being a princess was not all it was supposed to be. She admitted that though she could embroider well and play and sing with great accuracy and even some taste, her dancing and horse-riding were equally inept, and her candid admission of these limitations was found charming. To these accomplishments – or lack of them – she added one more that cemented her social success; she was a fiend for the Devil’s Picturebook. 

Her previous entertainments had been limited to reading and chess, at which (as her husband discovered to his cost) she was highly proficient, but cards opened a whole new world to her, and one excellently suited to her talents. She mastered new games with impatient rapidity and was set to beggar half her social circle with her passion for play when she realised that she had at her disposal a good deal more pin money than many of her companions. She was mortified, and Hans was obliged to stage a scene where he publicly reproached her for her levity and lightness of mind, and further informed her sternly that it was unladylike to play for high stakes, and that he would be infinitely obliged if she limited her betting to silver. He thought he did it rather well, complete with haughtily raised brows and a tone of bottomless disappointment learned from his mother, but Elsa nearly betrayed them with her rapt acquiescence to his strictures. It took her a considerable time to lose all her winnings to their original owners at silver loo, and he trusted she profited – if not financially – from the experience. He himself would have laid his winnings out on adding to his stable without a shadow of remorse, but Elsa was hopelessly soft-hearted, as well as having a handsome allowance, and indeed she sought his advice on remitting money to charitable ventures. He pushed her towards some politically neutral donations for widows and orphans, but drew the line at her cutting back on the commissioning of new dress, pointing out that there was a list of people who expected to be largely provided for by the donation of the old ones. 

Hans himself seemed to have very mixed fortunes at cards; it was widely observed that what he set himself to, he generally did well, being ruthlessly competitive, but he seemed strangely chirpy about losing some most peculiar bets to Elsa – there was the diamond pin he had lost the first time he wore it, which now adorned her hair when she attended the opera; a morning of fencing instruction which she took with a master from Germany visiting for the exclusive benefit of the princes; and some scandalously expensive chocolate, which seemed – even to Elsa herself – suspiciously easily won. She had put up her dully named, dully brown horse, Marron, her husband suspected hoping to lose him and get out of her riding lessons. Hans had the nerve to complain, after that game, that a bet had a lot less savour to it when you weren’t betting something you actually valued.

The Duchess of Grunwald, wife to his brother Dolph, who had stood beside him watching his play, tapped him reproachfully with her fan.

“Ah, Hanschen, what can you mean? We know you value chocolates more than anything – life, love, even honour.” He smiled up at his sister in law.

“It’s so much easier to know what you’re getting – or losing – when you bet it.”

“Never known you to bet anythin’ you could ill afford to lose,” remarked Torsten, the brother most inclined to hang around his siblings’ wives for the sake of annoying both them and his own wife with endless inappropriate flirtation. He had put his arm around Elsa’s waist when they were introduced, and Hans had been obliged to find him later and discuss the enthusiasm for exploring medical experimentation that was fired by the sight of any hand not his own laid on his wife.

“But surely the Princess could hardly afford to lose her horse,” suggested the Duchess. “He must be – one of her most valuable possessions, after all.”

“No, he’s right,” interjected the Princess. “I can’t imagine Prince Hans would wish me to forgo exercise even if I did lose Marron to him.”

“I dread her becoming fat,” he confirmed. Even Elsa recognized this as irony and duly ignored it, continuing to address the Duchess.

“I think he would just lend him back to me. I might even be the gainer by it; I wouldn’t have to pay for his upkeep.”

“You see, Duchess, what I have to contend with. Observe the low cunning of my highborn child bride, plotting to cheat me out of all I have with my own good nature.”

“I do wonder, Hanschen, how much of your property she could cheat you out of depending only on that. But you enjoy it,” she concluded, opening out her fan again with a snap, “it a romantic illusion about you that cannot survive exposure to your actual company for very long. “ Torsten offered her his arm, and they sashayed away to talk to a knot of ladies by the piano which included his mother; judging by that Parthian shot they’d be sharing many enjoyable witticisms at his expense.

“Well, I don’t suppose I should bet Marron again,” Elsa sighed, “purely in good sportsmanship.”

“Not unless your desperation to win drives you to the limits of your scruples,” he agreed, and unpicking what he’d just said, she realized her suspicion that she had just been allowed to win was quite correct.

She was a little piqued at the certainty.

“What – would one play for, if it had to be something valuable, then?” He looked at her with the careful neutrality of somebody answering a child.

“Usually – something personal. Putting up an heirloom – or in a lady’s case, a favour. Betting locks of hair, garters – those things are said to – increase the motivation to win.” The Prince had little to no experience of skittish, virginal girls, but he had trained horses before, and he knew well enough that you don’t look like you’re planning anything until you’ve lulled your target into a security so strong that consent can be taken for granted.

“That’s not motivation to win.”

“No. For that you need the other person to offer to bet something you really want.” There was a sudden flash of expression in the Princess’s eyes, a cat seeing a movement in the bracken, a deep alert certainty of what she would like.

“I would like – my letters - franked.” He looked up at her, eyes narrow, his tone in reply calm but firm. 

“Under no circumstances will I permit my wife to have to win her ordinary rights at the gaming table. Anything you want franked will be sent. Has something happened to make you think otherwise?”

She shook her head; no, no, nothing like that – she simply couldn’t find who to ask – think what to say -. Utter rubbish, he thought, resolving to investigate later on. Something had clearly happened.

“It would have to be a real luxury. Something you really, truly wanted.”

“A visit – home.” He looked up at her. He could hardly believe that would be acceptable, to his family or – still more, given the trouble they’d gone to, to be rid of her, and the indifference they’d shown to her personal welfare, since she’d arrived – her own. Elsa either didn’t realize how deeply her family wanted to ignore her, or wasn’t able to accept it.

“Done,” he said, deciding it was very important to win.

“What - ?” 

“Your gloves,” he smiled. Her face shut. She replied in a whisper so intense it was nearly inaudible.

“No.”

“Kisses,” he amended easily. She couldn’t refuse him the second bet, because she’d already refused the first. He was surprised by his own success; he’d really asked for the gloves because he didn’t think he’d get anything more personal; he had misjudged, and wondered how. “Three.”

“Three?” she echoed, face wiped blank with surprise, though this being Elsa, he did not know whether it was that she was astonished he should want to kiss her, or outraged that he should levy such a heavy tax as three separate ventures on her person against only one visit.

“Inflation is running rife, unchecked and untameable, all over Europe,” he assured her. “In the olden days – one. In the age of progress -three. One – here – “ he tapped the inside of her elbow – “One here – “ this time he touched her throat – “ and there.” He laid his finger on her lips. She stared at him appraisingly.

“My visit is to be three weeks, then,” she said, tossing her head. 

“If you win,” he conceded, wondering how he’d accomplish it if she did. The Princess was puzzling over something else.

“You are my husband. You could just tell me. I would have to.”

“You confuse me with my brother Torsten, who undoubtedly does tell his wife. I think I prefer government by consent.”

“I am going to be a queen,” flashed Elsa. “Nobody will govern me.”

“Clearly not, since even your husband has to win the chance to kiss you. You were the one who suggested I could compel you. I am telling you I have not the least intention of doing so. But if you wager it, Princess, you have to be prepared to pay. You give it gracefully and you’ve chosen to do it. No squeaking or freezing.” Her eyes flashed dark, wide, as if he’d caught out her in something, for one split second before she collected herself.

“Less the act than the manner,” she reflected. “Agreed. But I am going to win.”

“Choose the field of battle.”

“Chess.”

She was a battle-hardened veteran in the game, and she must intend to win, if she selected her strongest suit. However, she did not have his advantages in lack of scruple. He could always whistle up one of the dogs who could be counted on to upset the board and compel a re-match. 

As the late evening light faded, candle flames flickered about them, reflected from the chandeliers, the windows, mirrors, and the salon emptied as various people wished them goodnight and withdrew. The Princess bit her lip, adjusted her moves, concentrated intensely on the board. Her husband lounged, smiled, ordered more ratafia for his opponent and watched her sip it without any relaxation of focus. It made no difference, and - almost to his surprise, after two very close shaves, half his pieces tidily lined up at the side of the board - he closed in, blocked her rebuff, checked and mated. 

He tilted his head, watching her, beckoning her to his side.

She looked down at him, hands making awkward starfish shapes against the glossy grain of her skirts. There was a whisper of a moth buffeting the window pane when she turned and hands reached out and tugged her down to his lap. She was startled into stillness, head bowed, hands twisted together in a snakes nest parody of prayer.

“Elbow.” His hands were at her glove, turning it down towards her wrist, freeing her elbow cuff for unbuttoning so he held her arm out, inside soft and delphinium blue veined unfurled under his hand.

A scalding tear splashed into a sun-dazzle-edged circle onto it. He looked at her face. 

“I really –really – wanted the visit.” She drew in a little gasp of breath, stifling a sob. He decided against the elbow.

“Oh, Elsa,” he sighed, re-buttoning the cuff. “It would have been awkward, to take you home so soon. Your parents would be bound to be disappointed – “ he glanced up, finding her eyes wide and frantic, mouth pinched into a curl of dismay, and laced his fingers between hers – “not in you; disappointed that you’re so homesick and sad. That we haven’t been able to make you welcome enough to make you happy here.”

“I don’t mean to be a disappointment.”

“You are not a disappointment; you are a delight. But perhaps a visit so very soon -.” She nodded.

“I do see.” Deep breath. “I am not unhappy here. Sometimes I think I am happier here than I was at home. But it is very different and I am afraid of acting wrong.”

“Your own moral character will always speak against your acting wrong. And the years of Royal training will do the rest.”

The little ramrod straight princess made a sudden, decisive movement, wriggling her fingers free of his and snaking her arm up to his shoulder to fold her forearm behind his neck. Equally decisively, she presented her other arm to him.

“Unbutton me.”

“Dear me, you have become shockingly forward,” he observed, opting to obey her. She did outrank him, after all.

“My moral character prevents my contradicting my husband,” she replied, “but my Royal training reminds me to pay my debts.” He lifted her arm contemplatively.

“What if I preferred the other elbow?” he mused.

“ The other elbow is otherwise engaged.” He felt said elbow shift against his neck so her hand could slide gently into his hair. Her voice fell soft and sibiliant against his ear - “And in any case, I remember distinctly that this was the elbow alluded to in the bet.” 

“This is a very nice elbow,” he agreed, signaling approval with a small open-mouthed kiss. The dim light cast her eyes enormous as he found her regarding him with the interest of the possibility of pleasure. She shook her head back to offer her throat eyes still curiously, cautiously fixed on him. When he surfaced from that one her eyes were dark and still on his and she presented her mouth, clam shell shut, uncertainties and responses stammering across her face like shadows.

“Why are you making your mouth like a duck?” he enquired, causing her to shrink back, lips opening in a little moue of dismay that he chased and caught, measuring her surprise, then her response, under his mouth as she softened and shifted and he flooded with relief. Shy, yes; eccentric, definitely; too weird to like being touched, definitely not. 

The light was grainy as Elsa drew herself together and stood, an imposing rustle of skirt and underskirt almost obscuring the sound of her sharp inward breath. 

“I must go to my room now because it’s very late,” she told him clumsily, sketching a curtsey and bolting.

“Saucy little minx, ain’t she?” drawled Torsten. Hans peered over to him; he hadn’t realized his brother was still there.

“The Crown Princess?” he returned drily. 

“You ain't set on breakin’ the terms of your contract?” Hans thought about it. Torsten was not at all interested in him or his marriage for any reason of friendship, which meant he was looking to make trouble. Which was excellent, because there was nothing, in Hans’ experience, so useful for both providing a smokescreen for one’s own agenda and also finding out what trouble others were hoping you’d get into. 

“Not yet,” returned Hans sweetly. “She’s a complete innocent, you’ll notice. It’ll be weeks, I suspect.”

“Nice derriere,” he commented slily. Tor was a truly shocking reprobate, Hans reflected. He should have more sense than to pass a comment as openly lascivious as that about someone’s wife. Hans played up to it.

“All nice as far as I can see. It’s damned difficult to keep oneself in hand when – it’s so near.”

“Damned if I’m not of the same mind, brother. Could get the family started and be workin’ on the second by the time the glorious eighteenth comes up.”

“We’ll have to get to it sometime,” Hans agreed. They nodded sagely, like the men of the world they were, and Hans smiled a humourless smile as Tor wandered off. 

It was not true to say that Torsten ran off and told their mother everything the moment he found it out; for one, he was more for the shambling than the running, and further, his own affairs could upon occasion detain him from seeking his parent for whole half hours at a time. But he remained one of the more reliable conduits to the Queen, with the advantage that one could always pretend one hadn’t wanted her to hear. When one wished one’s mother to believe in a total fairy story like the one Hans had just spun, Torsten was invaluable.

 

Followed the summons from Her Serene Majesty to attend her in her chambers at breakfast the next morning. Hans wondered if his brother had caught her last night before she slept, or this very morning at dawn. Maybe he’d written her a note. 

Hans found his mother at her escritoire, making a note of some kind, some contract or draft Act of Parliament at her elbow. His mother, notoriously, worked far harder on matters of state than his father, who had no interest in the running of the country, as long as he was permitted his hunting and annual military reviews. 

“Good morning, Ma’am.” 

“Boots, Hans?” she said, eyeing them with displeasure as she rose to greet him, extending her hand. He kissed and returned it, replying as as his mother led him to sit on a sofa beside her.

“I’m engaged to take Elsa riding at eleven. Speaking of whom, is there any problem with her correspondence to Arendelle? She seems uncertain as to who should frank her letters. I have offered, now, of course.”

“I will look into it,” she promised. “But I fear that she permits herself a fantasy that we censor her letters, to spare herself the truth that she receives so very few in return.” He frowned. He sincerely pitied Elsa, who felt so isolated and unloved, and doubly so whenever additional evidence was adduced. The Southern Isles Royals offered few patterns for unadulterated virtue or blissful family relationships, but its King and Queen had managed to bring thirteen children to adulthood without succumbing to the urge to lock them up. She changed the subject - “Have you visited Nanny this week?”

“I’m expected for tea on Thursday, as usual.” 

“Has Adolphus spoken to you?”

“About tea on Thursday?”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Hans; about the responsibilities he has accepted for your bedding ceremony.” Hans regarded his mother with increased interest. 

“What responsibilities could Dolph have for that? Setting aside the fifteen? sixteen? months he has to take up these responsibilities.”

“That’s what I wish to speak to you about. I must be honest; I am concerned that you will – jump the gun.” One of the most enjoyable elements of Augusta’s conversation for Hans was listening for which of them was the most disingenuous. He treasured statements like “I must be honest” and gave them extra credit. At present his mother had certainly opened up a commanding lead, but it was early in the game.

“I have no idea what would lead you to think so poorly of me,” he declared roundly. It was only one lie, but it was sweeping, so he felt it was worth an extra half point. “To take advantage of a – mere child who is dependent on us for her protection would be blackguardly beyond measure.” And he would have another point for moral indignation. He had seen it enacted, but never actually felt it for himself, so he was pleased with his portrayal.

“I’m afraid you have been indiscreet about your intentions, and it came to my ears.” Tor hadn’t written a note, then. 

“Hans, there are very good reasons why it is vital that no – hasty consummation of your marriage should take place.”

“I wait to hear them,” he said. He did hate to have to admit truths at any point to his mother, but he was interested to hear which lie she selected.

“They are to do with trade. Relations – between ourselves and Arendelle and the Cossack states.” So he could discount the politics of international relations. “It is not my secret to tell. But it is imperative that this marriage remains – as it is – until the Princess is eighteen.” She had fixed him with a stare of imperious intrusiveness, so he bowed his acquiescence, regretting infinitely that matters with his lovely almost-wife had not progressed to such a point that he could walk straight from this interview to her rooms and start disobeying his mother within the next half hour. 

“I will not importune the Princess in any lover-like way then, until that time. Is that all?” Another outright whopper. Finding corners in which to importune Elsa with swarms of kisses and touches of a lover-like nature would be a hugely enjoyable challenge.

The Queen patted his hand. 

“Not quite. There is another reason for you to postpone consummation. It is not entirely desirable that you should have no knowledge of what must be done.” 

Hans decided against telling his mother that after a thoroughly enjoyable trip to Baden Baden the year before, where he had met a very fast, very pretty, very receptive young lady from the locality, married to a man foolish enough to let her lounge about the hotel alone while he frequented the casino, he had absolutely no doubt at all about what must be done. It was not his business to help his mother to a full knowledge of his desirable accomplishments. Her Majesty continued.

“There will not be any of that strange and unsatisfactory nonsense as with the idiot French King. That whole unfortunate revolution can be laid at the door of that pug-faced inbreed. Of course the poor girl went crazy for clothes and cards. Her husband provided her with neither pleasure nor children and it brought down the monarchy. It is not what I expect from any of you.”

Hans bowed again. His mother had been twelve at the time of the execution of Marie Antoinette, and it had left a deep impression on her. Her frown lifted a little. 

“Adolphus will tell you. He should be waiting for you in the breakfast room.”

Hans bowed again and accepted his dismissal.

 

Adolphus was indeed waiting for him in the breakfast room, devouring the newspaper and the last of the rolls. Judging from the immense smile on his face, he knew very well the content of the conversation Hans had just escaped.

“Do you come hotfoot, as my mother assured me you should, from a quite terrifying lecture about the perils of pre-marital consummation?”

“Indeed.”

“Animadversions against Louis XVI?”

“Many.”

“The sole cause of revolution his failure to satisfy his wife?”

“Exactly.”

“Time for your next rite of passage then. Visit to Baroness von Mecklenstein, Albrechtsrasse, expecting you around noon.”

“How is that to be managed, GiggleMug? I am promised to Elsa for her horse-riding lesson, Nanny for tea and I have business of my own to attend to.”

“Business? No business takes precedence over keeping your bride in expectation of happy events for the first decade and a half of your marriage, Hanschen.”

“Well that doesn’t begin for a year and a half.” 

In fact, it seemed to Hans that if ever he had had good reason to proceed as quickly as possible to the seduction of the Crown Princess of Arendelle, he probably had it now. His mother’s anxiety that he should not do so alone suggested it would be in his interest. Furthermore, whatever that contract said, God had joined him to Elsa, and annulment looked to him like a more likely threat to their happy and lasting union than untimely consummation; although that might result in other difficulties, he was inclined more to light the touch paper than to do what he was told, particularly by somebody as profoundly untrustworthy as his mother. It was his nature. Also, in the prevarication around the reasons why he should keep his wedding tackle in his cherrypickers, his mother had not offered to show him the marriage contract itself, which was where he assumed the truth of the matter would be found, and which he further suspected would be secreted in his mother’s rooms if not actually the one unrolled across her escritoire at this very moment. 

“I’ll go and change, and write a note to Elsa about the riding lesson,” he sighed. If he suggested she attend his mother, it would likely give him a good half an hour free to look at the contract before his appointment in the Albrechtsstrasse.


	3. Contract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manipulation, Instruction & Rejection. The only good thing that happens for Hans today is macaroons.

The Albrechtssrasse apartments were airy and modern, and the Baroness had furnished them with elegance, presumably to match herself. She was dressed with the exquisite care and expense that shows itself in simplicity, in strong contrast to her naturally dramatic appearance; tan skinned and green-eyed, her hair sulked in a single bolt so far down her back that she could sit on it. She had strong cheekbones and a smile that hinted at thrilling depravity. She also had a hard-earned reputation as exemplarily chaste and infallibly faithful to her husband, which made him the envy of half of married Europe, as she was also a scholar of every perversion and position, oriental or local, that had so far been discovered or discussed. And since people were of the opinion that what she researched so assiduously she surely practiced somewhere, as surely as she didn’t stray, her husband must the most fortunate ever to take the marriage vow.

Hans had formed no definite expectation of how the meeting might go, though given her reputation, he was unsurprised to be directed to a book of frightening age and heft, which he was to remove from the shelf and place on the table, opening at the page marked. 

“Examine well what you there find,” the Baroness instructed him. She had a marked accent, mainly Teutonic, which made the business of examining well a selection of staggeringly frank biological drawings of intimate human anatomy into a terrifying ordeal. She had also fixed him with a hard, glaring look which seemed to criticize him, though he was uncertain why. 

“Do you know, your Highness, why you have been sent to me?” He thought about explaining the connection between Marie Antoinette and his mother’s convictions but decided against it, opting instead for uncharacteristic candour.

“I assume because my mother fears I will contract syphilis if I get my sexual education in a brothel.” 

“That could be. Of course, no man has ever learnt anything of use in a brothel, also.”

“One does hear they are places of pleasure rather than – erm – education.”

“Quite. Ridiculous to imagine men would not know how to enjoy such activities. And women paid to pander to that enjoyment understand that their role is not to demand pleasure for themselves.” Hans blinked. The Baroness had paused and was staring at him. She seemed to think he paid women for their companionship. Hans was the child of too repressed an upbringing to have done so; Christian VII’s proclivities in this respect were still the subject of Court legend; another on his mother’s list of warning stories. He fell back on other gossip.

“Women, Madame Baroness, have the reputation of enjoying the – um – act of love with even more intensity than men.”

“Wholly remarkable, as this is not a subject any respectable woman ever speaks about, let alone to assert that. Conclusions?”

“Perhaps people say it because some respectable women have been known to risk everything for it, by seeking it outside their husbands?” 

“Nonsense. Men say it because they can’t have it, so they suspect it must be better. They also tell women that the act of love should not bring them pleasure. Why do you suppose they do that?” 

“I have no idea. I don’t know why any man would want that.”

“Think. Then tell me.”

“Because women don’t get pleasure from it.”

“Because women don’t get the same pleasure from the same act in the same way as men. And because men who are too ignorant or idle to bother with the enjoyment of their wives fear that they may enjoy it with somebody else. “

Hans gazed at his instructress with a mixture of admiration and horror. He had very seldom said anything about this activity, to anybody, and he certainly had never exchanged words on the subject with a woman. The way this interview was proceeding made him rather wish he had been permitted to continue uninformed. The Baroness, however, had arrived at some sort of conversational crisis. 

“The real question I need to ask is, how do you hope your bride will feel about it?” Dear God, really? Did this woman have no limits? He swallowed.

“I would prefer her to – like it – with me. I don’t know that I want her to find out whether she likes it with anybody else.” If she did ever find out whether she liked it with anybody else then anybody else would be turning into the terrible stain of murder on his conscience, so perhaps he should have said that he was definitely opposed to her finding out whether she liked it with anybody else. Whatever Elsa felt or didn’t about him, the electric sense of possessiveness he had felt for her on their first meeting had gone nowhere.

However, he was reasonable enough to acknowledge that if he intended to exercise his right to exclusivity, the least he could do was provide her with his best.

To his astonishment, he appeared to have said something right. The Baroness was nodding.

“Exactly. It is important because it is easier for a woman – to love someone who pleases her. Also she is more likely to conceive.” 

At this point she launched into a highly scientific disquisition, fully supported by detailed reference to the drawings, on the number and situation of nerve endings in women’s anatomy, the nature of their near-as-dammit daily chemical alterations throughout some mysterious lunar-governed ebb and flow of fertility, and – most disturbingly – an almanac of activities to take advantage of both. He was drawn between fascinated awe, a feeling that she was a total crazy who must be making this up, and the conviction that she should really travel the world giving lecture tours. 

 

On his return home, he was driven to Schnapps and the comparative privacy of the library to think the whole thing through. Dolph found him, and frowningly Hans shared the schnapps, and indeed the macaroons and peppered pumpernickel toasts that had arrived with it.

“What did you think of the Baroness, then?” enquired Dolph. Hans revolved the Schnapps around the glass, thought about sending for some ice and decided against it, sipped and cogitated.

“Her information seems to be interesting and useful. I am horrified by so very many aspects of her imparting it to me that I feel I may never ever be able to make any use of it. I contemplate a life of – well, withdrawal to a monastery. Chaste reflection and prayer.”

“Horror of marital relations isn’t the same as a vocation, you know.” Hans sighed deeply and took another macaroon. 

“I had had the impression that the process of begetting children was at worst straightforward and at best probably the most amusement you can have without bankruptcy. I appear to have been woefully deceived. I have a list as long as a damn racecourse of what has to be touched when and how and how often; and this needs to be rubbed like Aladdin’s lamp and that needs to be pressed like a stuffed mushroom and your aim needs to be true so you can hit the magical target which results in conceptual paroxysm. Target. Dear Lord, I thought you just had to put it in and wiggle it about a bit and the door opened, so to speak. Holy God.”

There was a pause while Hans gazed dolefully at his brother, who was sniggering unmercifully. 

“It’s not true, is it?”

“You’re lucky,” Dolph returned. “When I did it she wanted me to write a full report on my relations with Helena. I refused, of course. Shocking do.” Finding no other outlet that could express his horror, Hans had resort to a very bad word.

“My only comfort is, I don’t believe it. I think it’s a total lie. Either ladies do not require conceptual paroxysms to conceive, or they can have them without any of that stuff. There is no way on God's green earth that Gundar did that. I am as certain that he kissed her twice, pulled up her nightgown and executed two dozen press-ups on top of his misfortunate wife as I’d be if they’d both trotted over here and sworn to it on a stack of Bibles. And they’ve got four.”

“Henrietta could be a biological aberration.” Hans favoured his best-loved brother with a glare of stern reproach.

“Henrietta is a very nice lady. Don’t talk about her that way.” Henrietta had been particularly kind to the littler princes when she married their eldest brother, and the younger three could all remember her kissing their hurts better and admiring their crayon drawings and telling them stories during their formative years. Unlike their real mother, she enjoyed the company of children, didn’t care that they were messy and was pleasingly squishy to sit on. Hans recalled something else that had disturbed his composure.

“The endless laundry list wasn’t even the worst bit,” he continued in a wounded tone. “There was a wriggle response protocol. Apparently feverish writhing is a sign you’re doing something right. Great sign. A woman evinces all the symptoms of some type of seizure – hold tight and carry on. Everything’s fabulous.” There was a minuscule hiatus before Hans turned his accusing glare back to Dolph. “Do you have to do all these things with Helena?”

Adolphus snorted with amusement. He had the general demeanour of one hugely enjoying his brother's fastidious discomfiture, and having no intention of confiding anything about his own love life.

“Obviously not very often, Hanschen, as we have only managed Angelika.” Hans eyed him with undisguised distrust. They’d only been married two years; he wasn’t sure it was much of an answer. He stopped looking at Dolph and began looking at nothing, unfocused, eyes narrow, chewing on a macaroon. 

“I could still get an annulment.”

“Holding out for a better offer? Come on, even Mother is unlikely to post a spy on your bedchambers, Hanschen.”

Hans shrugged. Nothing was for nothing when you were a Royal. Not even marital relations. He added it to the list of ways in which one was expected to excel and decided he would, because the idea of any of his siblings being better than him at anything was unsupportable. 

There seemed an unbridgeable gulf between all this activity and Elsa; she belonged in a different box. She was rather what he imagined a younger sister would be like, which in turn reminded him of how he felt about his horse. He was very fond of his horse. He took exceptionally good care of him. They were an outstanding team, and there was no luxury that he grudged him. As far as Hans could see, to get the best from one’s horse one had to put in the hours, training, exercising, making sure the feed and the tack were the best and ensuring a high standard of environmental cleanliness, equine grooming and routine healthcare.

Some of this he had applied without a great deal of variation to Elsa; he put in the time and so far she did him credit. He supposed he was courting her; time and gifts and determination had led to caressing and kissing and that was less like having a little sister. But it wasn’t terribly like having a fling with someone else’s giggly bourgeoise wife in a German hotel room, either. And now he was a little mystified about what box to put her in. 

None of the information he had discovered from the Contract of Alliance he had used his half hour of freedom to explore made the putting of Elsa into a box any more straightforward. Or perhaps, it was just that the box Elsa belonged in seemed to contain the whole world, and it felt more like he was in a little box in her world more than she was in a little box in his.

The contract provided very favourably for the Southern Isles, which would have been more surprising had he not already known it was likely to. Arendelle’s trade tariffs on both imports and exports were negligible; development in Arendelle was tied to exports from the Isles; an explosion in agricultural productivity, timber and fisheries was just a few years away, judging by this.

Hans was far more interested in the provisions made for the Princess.

_… Whereas the Crown Princess’s Living Expenses my reasonably fall to the exchequer of her own kingdom, a stipend of 10,000 crowns shall be allowed to her husband for her convenient and suitable maintenance for each and every year or part year of the period of her residence and experiential education in the Court of the Kingdom of the Southern Isles, this to continue throughout any period of her sojourn, reviewable in light of increases in necessary expenditure._

_…In the event of the Crown Princess’s loss of life before the attainment of her majority, set at the time of her eighteenth birthday, a single emolument of 500,000 crowns in gold shall be accorded her husband in recognition of his loss and acknowledgement of their cousins’ kindliness against their hour of need, and of resignation of all claims to the crown of Arendelle, on the return of the Princess’s remains for interment of same as usual for the Royal House of her country _.…__

__

__

 

Elsa was worth a good deal more dead than alive, then, Hans reflected, at least to his mother. To himself, the reverse was true; a future of independence in a small, wealthy country, implementing economic prosperity and setting up his nursery with a rather eccentric but kind and pretty wife seemed infinitely preferable to hanging off his mother’s sleeve at the Court of Infinite Intrigue for the next twenty years. Augusta must be in receipt of the money sent so far, because he’d only seen a fraction of the amounts mentioned himself; if she was receiving it now, how easy it would be for her to receive anything payable on Elsa’s demise.

He remembered Ludwig. He hadn’t even been worth anything dead; he’d inconvenienced the family once too often when alive. He’d lasted six months in the navy, and his body had never been recovered. He sighed. He hadn’t particularly minded Ludwig.

And what about her parents in all this? How hen-witted were they, not to recognize the import of what they had signed? Or was it deliberate? 

He blamed himself; he should have taken a look at the contract long before this. He had been naïve and smug and taken for granted that his interests would coincide with his mother’s enough not to be worth picking a fight over. Worse, he had assumed that Elsa was a gift to sweeten her nation’s need for commercial favours, when in fact, she was clearly the centre of the problem. And he resumed his search for the heart of the mystery of his little princess-wife.

 

_…As concerns the Princess’s affliction, Arendelle indemnifies the Southern Isles against any and all consequential loss derived from its uncontrol, in recompense and in the prospect of extended and close-knit relations whereof the Southern Isles will attempt all reasonable cure and maintenance of the condition, to be indemnified against failure of such treatments and held in no way accountable for the likely mortal consequences of either her affliction or treatments before the age of her majority._

__

__

 

He nearly whistled. Complete carte blanche to dispose of Elsa with no reprisals. Trade concessions in exchange for kill or cure. Small bonus for death. 

Elsa appeared to have no friends. But happily she had him.

 

The subject of his cogitations appeared a little agitated at dinner, and took his arm afterwards with a soft voiced wish to converse with him. 

“Certainly. Shall we walk?” 

They strolled out into the knot garden. They could be clearly observed, so that his lack of any over-familiarity could be monitored, but there would have to be a bat employed as a spy for anybody to overhear them.

“Hans,” she started, and then halted. 

“Yes.” When had she started using his Christian name? He couldn't remember, and was slightly surprised that they hadn't had to have a conversation about it. Elsa could be maddeningly over-formal; but then, so could he. They'd been trained for it. It made her unconscious admission of him to this tiny social intimacy rather sweet; and he didn't know when that had happened, either. By and large Hans approved of formality. It made life easier if everybody knew where they stood, all the time, and if usually that was at a small distance. 

“I have been advised – that the amount of time we are engaged together is causing remark, and it seems to me that we should try to be less often together.” 

“You have been with my mother. Did she offer any other thoughts?”

“I have a new etiquette tutor starting tomorrow, and she thinks that we should not – give cause for gossip.” Hans was wholly underwhelmed by this argument, which he demonstrated by smiling indulgently at her and patting her hand. “Also she says – I shouldn’t trust you too far. She says you don’t always tell the truth.” Her eyes were fixed on his as if she expected to be able to read his character in them. 

“Her faith in my virtue is touching.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“How would you know whether to believe it, if I did?” Her hand was freezing cold on the crook of his elbow; he could feel it through his coat. He lifted it to his face, wrapped her fingers round his lips and blew, making an oven of his hot breath on her chilly gloves, soaking heat upon heat through the insulating fabric to her hand until it was radiantly hot. She stopped dead in her walk, at first transfixed by his action, savouring the heat with motionless amazement, and then snatching her hand back.

“What did you just do?”

“Hot potato. Not a thing in Arendelle? Henrietta used to give us all hot potato tummies to make us laugh. But sometimes you just do it because it’s cold. Your hands are cold.” 

“Yes –“ she nodded. She put her hand to her cheek. “Doesn’t it make your mouth cold?

“No, because your mouth is generating the heat.” 

“Your mouth hasn’t got cold?”

“And again, no. Do you want to check?”

“No. You’re trying not to answer me.” He smiled like a sleepy tiger, showing his teeth, as he stroked a finger down the side of her cheek and under her chin.

“You’re adorably easily distracted,” he suggested. 

“This is what your mother means,” she half-hissed at him.

“Yes, she is very miserable. This very day, she obliged me to promise not to seduce you before you are eighteen. I find the suspicion insulting; there’s a line between kissing and seduction and I know well where it is.” And that the line was in fact more a straight line which constituted a route, with some staging posts along the way, rather than a horizontal border between one and the other, was exactly the kind of fact he could rely on Elsa’s innocence not to know. “It’s hardly flattering to yourself, either. I know very well you wouldn’t permit me to go beyond the mark of what’s pleasing, and if my mother suspects you to be any other way, she should be ashamed. I told her so.”

“Do you lie to me?” This was a problem with Elsa. She was not only intelligent and honest, she was persistent.

“Not usually. I have told you some untruths. I have not lied to you about anything important.”

“What? What have you told me lies about?”

“I told you –“ He broke off. He couldn’t remember a single lie he’d told her. There was little percentage in lying to Elsa, because there was little to be had from her beyond the pleasure of her company. He must have lied to her. He opened his mouth and an equivocation popped out, but he struggled to recall bothering to frame an untruth for her benefit. “I can’t remember, specifically. I’m likely to have lied to you; I’m not a very honest person. But nobody around you in this Court is very honest. It’s not something we’re very good at. And if my mother tells you something, you can stake Lombard Street to a china orange on its mendacity.” 

Elsa considered what he said. She could easily believe that the Queen was not honest with her. The Queen did not care much for people as people; she saw them as little parts of the vast machine for getting what she wanted that was her world. If Elsa could not trust Hans, it was probably because he too closely resembled his mother. However, she had support from another source.

“I have reasons of my own, too, for thinking we should not be too much alone,” she added quietly. He was stung.

“That’s a great shame. I had hoped you liked my company. I enjoy yours.”

“It’s because I perhaps enjoy it too much,” she offered, her face crumpled in apology. She didn’t expect him to understand, he thought; and rightly, he was puzzled by her suggested withdrawal. 

“I have told you I won’t insult you with attentions you find – untimely. I promise it again. I will harm neither your person, nor your mind, nor your reputation. But I won’t be denied your company. Not even by you.”

“What makes you think you can harm me?” she hissed at him. He stared at her in loose jawed astonishment as she continued in a hushed, agitated whisper. “What if I harm you? You don’t know what you have been inveigled into, or you would not say these things. I am dangerous to you. Please accept what I say and allow me the use of my own discretion.” She seemed at the point of tears, and he thought she might break from him and run. 

“I accept your wishes, and I will do as you ask. I will see you indoors first, and you must calm yourself. Come.” And with Elsa trembling from her moonlight whitened hair to her glittering slippers, he escorted her back to the salon, where she made her excuses and her good nights. 

Hans bowed formally to her, deciding that now he had accepted her wishes and acted as she asked as far as the salon, he was free to renegotiate. Elsa had really not been specific enough in her demands. And if she considered herself truly a danger to him, her delusional state of mind really required his kind supervision. He'd considered the possibility that her affliction, whatever it might be, could be contagious, and decided that the liberty allowed her by his mother suggested it could not be. The only way his mother's behaviour - or the contract - suggested it might be catching was intimate contact, and he was certain that Elsa didn't believe she would lose control of herself to that degree just because they kept company together under the full and frank observation of the entire Royal household and the court. So even that could be discounted, pointing clearly to mental disorder, and Hans was quite vain enough to decide that his escort would be better rather than worse for her ease of mind. He had it on good authority that he was a very soothing presence. 

 

The question of what his mother was up to with the Baroness and her fearsome instructions was explained when he made his way to his own chamber, some time later, where he found a delightfully pretty brunette bedwarmer. 

“Hallo, beautiful girl of dubious virtue,” he greeted her. She giggled and wriggled at him. “Sadly I do not need your ministrations, tonight or any other night. Please get your clothes on and go back to whoever sent you. Who did send you?”

“Prince Adolphus.” Hans didn’t believe her. He almost didn’t disbelieve her, but he had had enough of his mother’s spying and machinations for one day.

“Go back to him. Give him my love. Tell him my hours of business are concluded and I need to rest. Off you go.”

 

After he had waited for her to leave, he had barely the energy to undress himself and roll under the sheets before fell into a sleep as deep as the sea and dreamless as a shark. He did not dream of his apparently dying wife who threatened him, or his seemingly thieving mother who had married him to an afflicted princess; he did not dream of the future or the past. Tomorrow he had an etiquette tutor to meet and a whole new plan to come up with. Time enough.


	4. The Chamber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa's plans go badly; events go so awry Hans can only react and not plan at all.

A hum of laughter and good-natured conversation carried in low, bantering voices warmed the air of the breakfast room and filtered with the smell of fresh croissants into the corridor outside. Elsa took a moment outside it to gather herself together and adjust her appearance before she entered.

Hans sat at the table with Adolphus and Helena and – unusually – Angelika, who at ten months was generally considered too young to be allowed out of the nursery, but who occasionally, by dint of being first-born and the unchallenged ruler of her parents’ lives, seemed to manage it anyway. As Elsa entered, Hans was the one laughing at something his brother had said, judging by how Helena was holding up one of Angelika’s fingers to shake it reproachfully at her husband. He had pushed his chair back from the table, where a plate of crumbs suggested he had completed his meal, and was sprawled out so he could rest one elbow on the back of his own chair, and one on Dolph’s. They were the picture of relaxation and content, and Elsa hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to disrupt the mood, and fearing she would.

The company looked up and saw her, while Angelika took advantage of her mother’s distraction to seize hold of a serving spoon and commence polishing her gums with all the dexterity of which she was capable, while dribbling copiously over her bib and tucker.

It was such a domestic scene, so easy and comfortable, and so very much what Elsa had not permitted herself to participate in for years. Hans’ expression lost its glow as he saw her, his face seemed to wrap itself up in distance and withdraw himself from her. A wave of terror swept over her. He was still angry with her from last night, they might all know, would side against her – a tingling chill swept along her fingers and she halted, abruptly, curling them up into her palms, trying to hold on, to hold herself in, to fold up her anxiety and merely doubling its thickness, and panicking, and making it worse. She murmured something inarticulate and backed out.

“Lover’s tiff?” enquired Dolph.

“Oh Hanschen, what did you do?” laughed Helena. He honoured her with an indignant look. 

“It’s of no consequence; go after her – she can’t wander about looking like that, she’ll frighten the servants.”

“Hm. She spent our last conversation explaining that we must spend less time together. Judging by that little Cheltenham tragedy she’s planning to run away from anywhere she finds me – and if I go after her that will only have the effect of compelling the poor girl to run faster.”

“Ah – a delightful day-long game of tag for you, then. Try and catch her somewhere – charming.” Hans refrained from grinding his teeth at his sister in law. He was not going after Elsa because she had made it abundantly plain that she didn’t want him to. Her reasons were invented, and he did not believe them – except that maybe she did have her reasons, but they were not what she told him. She wouldn’t tell him the truth, in spite of the ironic fact that, if anybody had ever been given reason to trust him, Elsa was she. 

Seeing her had reminded him how infinitely displeased he was with her. She could run about the castle with her tiny little frozen hands in their inadequate gloves clasped fearfully before her chest, and her cherry lipped mouth pressed into a wavy line of mute misery and her eyes darkened and pansy wide with unspoken terror all day. Or if she felt the need, all week, all month, and even all the next year and three months, when they’d have to meet again to fulfil the contract. She could do what she liked. He didn’t care that she was so fretful and her mind so fried with fear that she couldn’t walk into a room and eat her breakfast like a normal person. He’d known she was broken, strange, rejected, and had only been palmed off on him because he was not yet married, and relatively unimportant. And not just broken, but obstinately rejecting mending.

He muttered the second oath he had vented on her account in 24 hours, scraped back his chair and strode out of the breakfast room, causing Helena to mug a gasp and put her hands over Angelika’s ears. Since this did not affect her possession of the spoon, Angelika was not unduly perturbed, either by the swearing or her mother’s reaction, and dribbled on.

Elsa was not difficult to locate, as she was cringeing in an alcove, a bare ten yards from the door, flexing her hands and attempting to control her breathing. 

The sight made him furious with her. She wanted to preserve her distance because it made her into this quasi-lunatic. She wanted to push him away from her so she could go and be taught by an etiquette tutor – appointed by his mother – who presumably had outstanding qualifications in how to process princesses into insanity – presumably was just waiting to instruct and enforce isolation, erosion of any sense of worth, refusal of contact, social, personal or physical. 

She looked up at him as if she was drowning, and her look of anguish once again caused him to collect his feelings and address her gently. He wished he didn’t feel so sorry for her.

“If avoiding me means avoiding me even in the presence of others, or avoiding my whole family, or being this upset, it isn’t something I can allow you to do.”

“I mustn’t – I hurt people when I get close to them.”

“Oh Elsa. How perfectly you will fit into my family. Now you must come and have some breakfast.”

She held back, shaking her head. 

“You don’t understand.”

“Tell me.” She shook her head again, her eyes moistening. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Her eyes looked into his, as deep and as blue and nearly as full of salt water as the sea, tears oozing fatly from the edges. He reached sadly for his handkerchief and tidied the tears into it, before he tucked her hand into his arm.

“You can keep your secret and come and have breakfast. Or I am going to start kissing you here and now and carry on until either something happens and I find out, or you tell me.”

It was a relief to find that Elsa’s principles did not preclude vulnerability to blackmail, and he escorted her back to the breakfast room. He announced to the assembled members of his family that it had been a misunderstanding, and that he would be taking Elsa out sailing later. On the Goldwing, which was mainly his own, and they would be delighted if Adolphus and Helena joined them, and even Angelika if they wished.

 

Disbarred from his wife’s presence after breakfast, Hans was obliged to lurk in an unprincely manner about the halls in order to happen to meet the etiquette tutor. 

That the man was not a tutor of any kind was to Hans’ cynical eye apparent at first glance. He was as tall as Hans, but skinnier, oldish, with tufty white hair, and owl-large spectacles. He had a gait that was a strange mixture of bouncy and jerky, half way between the stalking of a tall bird and the galumphing of an enthusiastic dog. He carried two leather cases, both unhasped and almost spilling out their extensive paper contents. Quite aside from the fact that this was the man who was to be privileged to replace him as his wife’s primary source of information and assistance, than which he could imagine nothing more inappropriate or offensive, he looked to Hans like a seedy chancer. 

“Herr Viktorssen?” The seedy chancer stopped and looked at him, smiled a smile of ancient innocence that ill-concealed his innate shiftiness. He was missing one of his canines, and also wore a little gold hoop earring. The decay and the cavalier style earring added to his general air of moral debility. Hans strongly disliked the idea that this man would be spending time with Elsa. He exceuted a small courtly bow. “Prince Hans; it is my wife whose education you will be managing.”

“An honour to meet you, Your Highness.” Hans gave the man a tight-lipped smile.

“I shall be in the library this morning; I beg you will call on me if you require assistance, or if Elsa is uneasy; she is a very gentle, delicate girl.” Herr Viktorssen stood looking at him with his head on one side as he listened, and then stopped listening and started talking, very much as though he knew all that Hans was about to say, and didn’t want to hear it again, and knew far more about Elsa than Hans did.

“Yes, I have been thoroughly briefed; I believe I can help the Princess, because of course, years ago, these little blights were not so uncommon, and it was dealt with perfectly well by the remedies of the Mountain people. I am expert in this area of study, and my remedies have been proved efficacious on more than one occasion. She will be well very soon. They really don’t take very long at all. Not at all long. No.” Completing this patronising paengyric to his own powers, the seedy old bird bobbed an awkward bow and stalk-bounced away.

Hans asked himself if it was sheer snobbery that made him find this person so repellent. He concluded it was not. He was sure the staff was relatively poor, and very few of them made him feel so bilious with mistrust.

He went to read the papers in the library and await developments. There were apparently none, for he was undisturbed for the rest of the morning. 

 

At the hour appointed to leave for the harbour, Elsa did not appear. The servant sent to enquire after her reappeared flustered and a little embarrassed. He bent close to Hans’ ear to speak confidentially. 

“The princess has not been out of her rooms since – since the tutor left it. Three hours since.”

“And she can’t leave it now?”

“It appears to be – very securely fastened, from the inside, Your Highness. Nobody can get in, and she won’t speak to anyone.”

Hans turned and began to walk towards Elsa’s rooms, accompanied by the servant. “The door has been attempted – the lock tried, but the key can’t be put into the lock. It’s as though it’s glued.”

The Prince raised an eyebrow. 

“Did nobody think that the time to inform me passed about – oh, three hours ago?”

“Her Majesty Queen Augusta was informed.”

“Ah,” Hans smiled seraphically. “Family.”

 

He was glad to see that some unavailing attempt had been made to remove the door from its place. The screws had been removed, and placed neatly on a small occasional table, next to the hinges. He directed a look of interested enquiry towards his mother, who was supervising all that was failing to go on. She nodded. He pushed at the door. It was as solid as rock and equally unmoving. 

“Three hours, Ma’am?” he enquired. “And nobody thought to inform me?”

“It’s a very difficult situation, Hans.”

“Has someone tried the window?”

“Of course someone has tried the window. It’s solid. There’s an inch of – some substance – on the inside. It’s impossibly resistant.” What was solid? He wondered. What weirdness had that idiot tutor scared her into? With what material had she barricaded herself into her chamber?

“The princess has hidden depths,” he remarked. He turned around and began to walk away down the corridor, removing his gloves as he went. He walked into the next door room, laid his gloves and then his jacket over the back of a chair and shoved up the sash of the window so he could swing himself out of it, over the sill and onto the ledge conveniently placed below it so you could inch around the building to the next window.

“Hans!” shrilled her Serene Majesty. “What if you fall?”

“That’s why you have thirteen of us, Ma’am. In case of accidents.” It crossed his mind that things are supposed to go in threes, in which case he just had to hope it was instant death that would befall him and not lingering invalidism. He would be even worse at long-suffering illness than he would at being a monk.

Putting such morbid thoughts away from him, he shuffled along the stone ledge and arrived shortly at Elsa’s window. 

It was solid ice. Ferny swirls and fronds decorated the whole of the pane of glass, thickening the transparent substance into something entirely obscured, as densely frozen over as a pond would have to be to take your weight. He thought it must be at least an inch thick. He hammered on it, just as a thought struck him which made him nearly lose his balance; _Elsa did this. Elsa can create ice an inch thick, at will._

She was an ice mage. It was like a series of dominoes falling in his head as one realization triggered another; she was being treated as sick when she was a species of natural enchanter. She was being made to repress and deny her abilities, and this was making her behave like a lunatic, and he doubted not, storing up trouble to come. What is denied does not go away, it emerges with redoubled strength and without respect for occasions. Her parents had tried to love her and failed, concluded she was a dangerous freak and arranged to ship her off, to deny responsibility and dumped her. 

His mother had accepted the risk, while not wanting him accidentally killed by the throw of the dice that was marital relations with an ice mage, but was willing to risk it for the potential gain. Well, that was how the game was played. He didn’t see Elsa’s ability as off-putting, himself. He was impressed, and even a little pleased. She was not a pretty but hopeless little mouse after all. Well, good for her.

“Your Highness? Are you there?” It seemed a daft question, but since the window was entirely filled with frost and nobody had heard from her – “It’s your husband. Hans.” He had no idea why he had added his name; it was highly improbable she had any others. But at this moment, Elsa was dealing out magnificent amounts of highly improbable, such as a room fully hermetically sealed with ice. He thumped again at the glass.

There was a sound from within – one that might be movement. It was a softened crunch, like a step on snow might sound.

“Your Highness? Elsa?”

“Go away!” Her voice was a semi-animal wail – low pitched and urgent.

“I apologise, but I – um – can’t. It’s an awfully long time since I climbed out here – and I just looked down – it seems a very long way. I don’t think – I don’t feel able to move.”

“Oh, Hans,” he heard his mother’s voice expressing her unsurprised disappointment with the polish of years of practice. “I’ll have the men fetch a ladder.” She was bustling off before she could catch his look of utter disbelief. He’d never expected his mother to fall for this.

“My hands are going numb. I don’t think I can hold on that long. Elsa – if you would just unfreeze the window – “

“I can’t.”

“Please, Elsa, I don’t want to fall.” Pause. “Please let me in.”

Quite abruptly, two little patches of misty thaw appeared through the frosted window. That ice was easily an inch thick, he wondered. The patches grew, expanding until they overlapped and made one large and still growing circle of visibility into the room beyond. Elsa’s ridiculously large eyes gazed up at him while behind her glowed a blue-white cave of solid frost. The noise of the window sash being wriggled free cut in on his thoughts. 

He took his hands well away from the window, leaning instead on the stone surrounding it. It was hefted open by a considerable effort of Elsa’s slender arms, and she put her hand out to help him in. He didn’t need it, of course, but he took it to keep up the Poor Vertiginous Prince façade, and Elsa used it to pull him through the window to the safety of her snow bound room, and hold his chest to her ear. It was utterly ridiculous because he’d never been in the smallest danger, but the value she had for him trembled through her scrap-like arms and her quick-beating heart and that was touching. And soothing. 

She adores me, he reflected. Well, of course, I’m her husband. But there had to be more to it than that. He’d seen plenty of husbands and wives who could barely stand to be in the same room, and they were just as married as the most loving couples were. She had nobody else to love, which must help his cause, but also he had treated her with kindness, and that seemed unusual to her. Or perhaps they were just a good match.

At that moment the good match was clinging to him like a marmoset, apparently still speechless, and he was not letting the opportunity slip, so he politely held her back and awaited her next eccentricity.

“I didn’t mean to,” emerged against his chest. “And – if you must – I understand, your mother explained to me –“

“What didn’t you mean to do?”

“This. The ice. I’m not supposed to do it. I can’t stop it.” Well, that was a little frightening for both of them, he thought. 

“You did stop it. You thawed the window.” 

“You needed to get in.” She drew away from him, plainly thinking. There was even something endearing in her inability to think and hug at the same time. “I can’t remember when -. It’s been a very long time since I managed to undo the frost or the snow or – anything.”

“Today is a big day for you, then,” he returned. “Have you ever been in control of it?”

“Oh yes – when I was little. I used to make it snow in the ballroom. Me and my sister used to make snowmen and have snowball fights and have tea tray slides.” Her voice slipped low and dreamy as she drifted in memories of her happy childhood, her face loose and soft, and the light in the room seemed a softer shade of cerulean.

“You must have been the most marvellous sister,” he said, a little enviously. She shook her head.

“I hurt my sister. I hurt her when we were really little. I was making snow hills and she was running on them and jumping and I missed. I hurt her with the snow. I struck her.”

“But Princess Anna’s all right, isn’t she? You write to her.” Elsa nodded. 

“Yes. She was – we had to ride out to the troll people in the valley. They cured her. But they warned me, that I’m dangerous, that people will fear me and then try to hurt me. And I can’t hurt them. I’m their princess.” There was a moment while she looked down at her hands. They wore gloves, but clearly these had not been equal to the task of containing the powers of an ice mage. She repeated the key phrase of her short sad catechism. “I’m dangerous.”

“Children are dangerous,” he told her. “See this?” He directed her attention to the V-shaped scar on his cheek. “Morten – me – fencing practice. I was six, and Morton thought I’d think it was manly to have a scar. Neither of us thought it was that manly when I’d covered both our shirts in blood and we’d had to be lectured for half an hour about ‘could have lost an eye’. “ 

Elsa’s fingers were at her mouth, then on the scar, tracing its outlines with a sort of awe. 

“Yes, imagine; my looks and my three dimensional vision in one go. We weren’t allowed to fence together for a fortnight, and neither of us was allowed out of a mask for practice for six years. The locking of the armoury was well tended to after that, and I didn’t see any foil that wasn’t blunted until I turned thirteen. But we both carried on training. Because nobody did die. Nobody did lose an eye. It was an accident. We were only children.”

Elsa’s gaze was locked on his. She was listening intently. He squeezed her hand.

“Come, Princess Perilous. This blue light is hurtful to my eyes and also it’s cold in here. Melt the door and we’ll go sailing.”

“I don’t know how.”

“How did you do the window?”

“I was so scared you would fall –“ she blanched at the memory, and he smiled at her and held her hand back to his cheek.

“For somebody with such extensive abilities, you are strangely adorable.” 

“I think I am strangely everything I am,” she replied shyly, with the first hint of a smile. 

A clatter of ladder on sill came from the window. They turned, and he squeezed her hand again. There would be no need to unfreeze the door then; though perhaps it would be better if Elsa changed into the fencing breeches his mother had thought unsupportably fast. Well, Hans thought, she had bigger fish to fry now.


	5. The Santa Lucia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa & Hans come to a sort of understanding, based on a misunderstanding

Wearing breeches, with her hair tucked into a net and a hat in her hand for greater concealment should it become necessary, Elsa skipped down the ladder with considerable agility and accompanied Hans to the stables, where he started tacking up Sitron. Her face told a whole new tale of nervousness as she watched.

“I don’t know that I can hold him,” she protested. 

“You won’t have to, will you?” he smiled at her. “Come, foot in the stirrup, I’ll help you.” Elsa’s reluctance amused him; it might have been dislike of riding altogether, or it might have been her embryonic dislike of being told what to do. She frowned and stepped over, placing her hands on the saddle before recoiling.

“I can’t ride – like that. Like a man.”

“Yes you can; you’re wearing breeches. It will be vast deal easier, I wager.”

“Girls – who aren’t married can’t ride astride. It’s immodest.”

“O-oh,” he said. “So are the breeches. And as for the rest of it – I think your purity will not be in any way compromised by riding astride, and if I do not object, who else should?”

“If I permit my reputation to be ruined – what if you renege? How can I trust you?”

“You’re absolutely right, of course. Our only available choice would appear to be consummation of our union on this very spot, which makes me wish I hadn’t talked you into the breeches. I may add that I was rather enjoying the breeches until now.”

“Have you been looking at my legs?” Elsa’s face was enflamed with outrage. He was wholly charmed. She had stopped being scared for long enough to progress to righteous wrath. He liked her in this new mood nearly as much as he liked her in the breeches. He smiled the smile of an angel at her.

“Yes, Elsa, and revelling in every moment. They are very nice legs. You should be pleased.”

“I am not pleased. I – have to go back to my rooms and alter my dress!”

“You can’t go back to your rooms and alter your dress, because you need to go in and out via a ladder. Now, are you going to trust me and ruin your virginal reputation by riding a horse as God intended, or are you going to unfasten your breeches so I can enjoy my conjugal rights and put this whole world of worry to an end?”

Elsa pressed a little closer to Sitron. Staring down, she took a breath.

“Do you still want to be married to me?” She looked up at him with her jaw set stony and her eyes staring hard at him. “Nobody would blame you now, if you wanted to – bow out of the arrangement. Nobody expects someone with any hope of any happy normal life to marry into somebody accursed. And I’ve had it from birth, I don’t think it can be cured, or go somewhere. There were other matches considered, and none of them would have me. You were the last throw of the dice. My father said if you couldn’t be persuaded he didn’t know what he’d do with me. But I know what he would have had to do. Nobody would have blamed him, and nobody would blame you.”

“Your father is to be congratulated, then, on his astuteness in locating me.” _The soulless sniveling sneak. _“Because I very much do want to marry you, Elsa. I have no idea what Arendelle is like, but you may have noticed that if I don’t marry and leave this place I have no chance of any happy normal life. I don’t want to turn into a spy and flunky for my mother, like Torsten, and Dolph remains here as private secretary to my eldest brother, and it’s such a life of being ordered to accomplish the most mundane things as I could not endure. My destiny other than you lies with the navy. I was only recalled from sea due to your parents’ communication.__

I like the sea, and I enjoyed the navy – it is an environment suited to my talents – but there isn’t very much to do except try not to get killed, or, when you’ve had enough of that, reverse the process. Sooner or later I suppose I might be fortunate enough to meet with some Archduchess or Baroness acceptable to my parents, but you, Elsa, are a great deal more acceptable to me. I think your abilities are remarkable, and I find you – very acceptable, as a bride. I would have preferred you to be a little stupider, but I am prepared to accept you just as ravishingly lovely, intelligent and kind. Enchantments aside, I understand you are only human.”

Elsa’s face glowed and she kept her eyes down to hide the childlike degree both of her relief, and of her pleasure in the compliments.

“I could promise you supreme command of the navy,” she offered gently.

“I am delighted to accept. And in exchange, I promise that I will remain your devoted slave – and husband.”

Hans gave her a leg up onto Sitron – earning him one of Elsa’s startled looks at the fact that he had touched her bottom, even if it was wholly innocent – and got up behind her, feeling her shoulders tense momentarily and then relax, deciding to trust him. 

He beguiled their ride to the harbour with his many and various projects for their future happiness, including an elaborate scheme for him to take her on an extended sailing tour for the next year, so that neither of them would have to tolerate the intrigues of his mother or the irritations of court tittle tattle. He described the beauties of the seascapes and joked about how well Elsa would take to scampering up the rigging in her breeches, and he felt his overwrought bride unwind into warmth and softness between his arms as she allowed it would be an excellent thing, suggesting she sleep up in the crow’s nest, preferably in her breeches and a piratically ruffled shirt. He was enquiring if she intended on cutting her hair, so she could truly pass for a boy, when they rode out of the Friedrichstraade and onto the harbourside. 

The Goldwing floated deserted, and overshadowed by the Santa Lucia, the Westergard family’s official yacht; a monstrosity, in Hans’ view, both of extravagance and of size – the whole thing was hideously over-ornate, large enough to accommodate most of the family in luxurious comfort and a nightmare to sail, being far too shallow in the draft and needing ballast which endangered the lower decks, rendering her too dangerous to sail out into the deeper waters round the coast. 

Moreover, she was swarming with crew, with busy staff, with his family. Dolph was at the bottom of the gangplank supervising the accommodation of the horses for the three carriages deemed necessary to transport himself and his wife and Torsten and sundry attendant ladies and Elsa’s tutor, all of whom were arranging themselves around the Queen like drones, discussing what food might be offered, where the views would be best and when so that an awning might be put up to offer the best shade for the hottest part of the trip, and whether it was imperative that somebody return to the palace for the trivial item that had been forgotten or lost on the road down or entrusted to somebody sensible enough to absent themselves from this scene of silliness.

Hans felt something sink inside him as if he had swallowed a stone. His mother must have moved with remarkable rapidity, but he himself had been busy with the strange interlude with his wife. The single advantage to this situation was that there might be an opportunity to shove that malevolent old fraud of a tutor off the side and leave it too late to rescue him from drowning. The chances of leaving him behind unnoticed were non-existent due to the hideous bobbing slowness of the Santa Lucia. 

He cursed his foolishness; his mother had outmanoeuvred him again, and he had walked – albeit on his horse – straight into it. He had allowed himself to spend his time – he might as well admit it – dallying with Elsa, flirting and soothing and softening up, when he should have been subjecting her to the most exhaustive interrogation of which he was capable. He had established no further information about her abilities, he had made a single plan and he had once again not thought of all contingencies, assuming he would have the whole afternoon to draw her out, to spend assessing the ground they were engaged on. He made error after error and he reproached himself for it.

Of course his mother had spoken to Dolph; naturally she had moved to consolidate her division of himself from Elsa. She couldn’t have supposed Elsa would take such exception to her “tutor” that she would transform her part of the palace into an impenetrable igloo, though he assumed she’d been better able to guess than he was. Why had he not foreseen this, why had he felt a moment’s surprise to see them? She was outplaying him with guile; he would have to rebuff her move with openness. He brought Sitron to a halt, whispering into Elsa’s ear.

“Elsa, I am truly sorry. This was not at all what I had in mind. I wish you will remember three things; firstly, I am bound to you by my own inclination and interest as much as my honour; that my mother is not, and will act accordingly; and that my mother’s bête noire is Marie Antoinette.”

He dismounted and put his hands up to help his scandalous breeches wearing bride down.

“I cannot conceive your meaning, of course, but I will do my best,” she promised him. He gave her waist a little squeeze of acknowledgement or opportunism – he himself could not have separated the two out – and walked her to the gangplank. 

She swept regally up to the deck before him, head high, every movement one of swanlike elegance, and executed one of her deepest curtseys to the Queen. 

“Mama la Reine,” she greeted her serenely. If Queen Augusta was discomposed by this form of address she gave no sign of it. She advanced towards Elsa with her hands outstretched, taking both Elsa’s in her own.

“My dear child,” she said, head a little to one side, as if she were listening for something inaudible to ordinary human hearing. “We were so concerned about you this morning. We agreed that you needed the company of your family after such a difficult episode. We will have a little pleasure cruise, just to Juteborg, and you will be able to enjoy some diversion. But we must find you some more suitable dress.”

“My husband has told me that he likes me in them, Ma’am. Nobody can reproach a girl with so little to keep her spouse’s interest alive for trying to dress to please him,” replied Elsa with a kind of nearly genuine innocence that momentarily silenced her mama-in-law. 

“Still, your Highness would not wish to give rise to gossip,” intoned the Queen firmly.

“No, no of course not,” said Elsa with a little gasp, as though the thought could not possibly have occurred to as gently bred an ingénue as herself. 

“People can be very narrow minded,” sighed Queen Augusta.

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” chimed Hans. 

“Ah, Hans. We depend on you to captain us safely to Juteborg and back this afternoon. We will take great care of Elsa.” 

“Naturally, Ma’am.” Hans doubted sincerely that anybody else on board would have the knowledge to pilot this gold filigree plastered tub of pretension through the currents and shallows to Juteborg, and he did not particularly wish to drown today. In spite of his mother, he still had hopes of his life.

He annexed Herr Viktorssen by suggesting he bore a family resemblance to himself and enquiring if they might be cousins? Herr Viktorssen accompanied him to the upper deck with an air of relief and started talking. He was staggeringly patronizing, which Hans hoped implied he was also vain; vanity was something you could work with. 

“We should take a drink together,” he suggested, and sent for some. He suggested Herr Viktorssen take a turn at the wheel, showed him round the instruments, explained the rigging and sails to him, and discovered the chancer was a pettifogging grammar pedant when he corrected the phrase “through the trees” to “around the trees” with a condescending smile. It was perfect. The man’s vanity was a marvel, and his loquacity waxed with every drink. Hans tipped his; he could drink if he wanted, but he never wanted. He hated to be out of control and privately scorned both the habit and the people who enjoyed it.

“You know, Herr Viktorssen, the truth is that I wanted to speak to you. Alone. Man to man. You know.”

“Ah, yes. Lots to say that is best not discussed in front of the fairer sex,” agreed Viktorssen, squinting a little. Hans inclined his head.

“Wanted to ‘pologise to you, Herr Viktorssen. “ ‘Bout m’wife.” Viktorssen was nodding away like a parrot. “She’s not right, y’know. Not quite the full ticket, if you take my meaning..”

“It’s the curse,” shrugged Viktorssen. “Seen it before, and I’ll see it again. Sends them queer in their attics, poor li’l things. Ver’ sad. Yes, ‘fraid she’s a ver’ troubled young thing. I did show her the bes’ care ‘n’ tention. Sad little creature. Tol’ her she shouldn’t let stuff you did get to her, but too late.”

The horrid little parrot man gazed sadly at Hans, as if he had something to do with this. Hans was absolutely sure he did not, and refilled Viktorssen’s glass.

“Din’t do anything anyone wouldn’t have done,” he said, hoping for some illumination from Viktorssen.

“Ezzackly. Just what any red-blooded male would do with a pretty girl.” God’s teeth, did this vile seedy little creature think he’d bedded Elsa? Did he imagine Elsa would let him? He nodded in agreement.

“Just what happens.”

“Tol’ her – just a bedwarmer. Men have needs and she can’t meet ‘em. Not your fault – hers.”  
“She din’t like it?” he asked. “I din’t tell her, y’know. Din’t rub her nose in it at all.”

“She knew. I asked how she felt about it, and she definitely knew all about it. Then she froze up the floor. Ver’ bad. Tried to make her feel better – arm round her shoulders, gave her a cuddle, din’t like it. Even more ice then.”

Between them, his mother and this idiot had decided it would be a good notion to bait an ice mage with jealousy, and he was the unwitting patsy for this. It was nice, he reflected with some irony, to know that Elsa was not the only one who was a touch lunatic and a little out of control. And for this seedy item to put his arm around her made him want to run him through rather more than just push him off the boat, which was a blessing in disguise, as the possibility of pushing was so terribly proximate.

He shook his head sadly.

“Can’t ‘pologise enough. Soft upstairs, no mending it.” Viktorssen nodded.

“Don’t think so, no. Shame, she’s so pretty.”

“Hnh. Married to her, not married to her,” offered Hans. “Wouldn’t want to do anything too close to that – wedding tackle with permanent frostbite. Even if it wasn’t, wouldn’t want to sleep in the same bed.”

“Doesn’t do anything in her sleep. Doesn’t affect her,” said Viktorssen, shocking Hans with the production of actual, useful information. “In the papers. Quite often doesn’t, though. Seen it before.” And then, as though this moment of lucidity had exhausted him, Viktorssen tottered off to perch on a coil of rope and almost immediately fell into a snoring slumber. Where did his mother find these people? 

The rest of the afternoon played out without any incident of any interest, that Hans could see, although he was mainly left to himself, for which he was grateful; he required cogitation time. Firstly, it had become apparent that everything concerning Elsa would now have to have a contingency plan, as his mother would surely continue to attempt to keep them apart, and Elsa was his strongest ally in keeping them together. In view of this established alliance, he felt it was probably fair to tell her that her fear of abandonment for a floozy was so wholly misplaced as to be focused on some girl whose name he had never learned, and with whom no intimacy had taken place, and who had been dispatched in any case. 

He would speak to his mother about Viktorssen, who would not be permitted anywhere in Elsa’s vicinity without a chaperone, and if his mother tried anything he would bundle the vulture up and have him transported to the middle of Russia. He might send him to the Court of St Petersburg and see what Liev, the brother in diplomatic attendance there, made of him. 

And he would find the papers to which Herr Viktorssen had referred. A busy time lay ahead of him, as the wind filled the sails and drove the ship serenely on under his hand, and Hans sighed and relaxed, because he did love to be busy.


	6. Green Eyed Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hans conducts some scientific experiments on his mother and Elsa.

Hans succeeded in keeping himself busy for the next evening, commandeering a suite of rooms nearly adjoining his own for Elsa, refusing to countenance a single servant approaching her old room and commissioning a whole new wardrobe for her from Mme de Delignac while declaring that her clothes had all been ruined by a leaking roof that he ascribed wholly to carelessness on the part of the palace staff, that firstly he quite terrified said staff, who had seldom seen the prince so ill-tempered, and secondly he contrived to receive the urgent summons from Her Majesty’s rooms on his return from exercising Sitron the next day, giving him the opportunity to attend her in full riding regalia, which she utterly loathed. To underline the affront he picked up a pair of spurs on the way, and made his way with a faintly clinking step to the rendezvous. He never wore spurs for riding; only people who could not handle their mounts needed to rip open their flanks to encourage them. 

His mother’s response was even satisfyingly dramatic than he could have hoped. She positively paled at the sight – and possibly also the smell – of him.

“Good God, Hans! What can be so amiss?”

“You ask me, Ma’am? You sent for me with urgency; I attend you with all the rapidity at my disposal.”

“You reek of the stables!”

“Of course. I came directly. I imagined, Ma’am, it might be a matter of some little importance, possibly touching on my wife.”

“Indeed, of course it is,” she agreed. “I have been so concerned for what you must be feeling.” Hans could not remember Augusta ever being concerned for what anybody was feeling. He was faintly surprised that she knew the term. She was a queen, not a writer of queasy romance novels. Still, it was a superb opening.

“What I must be feeling,” he retorted bitterly. “On being thrown into the path of mortal danger without so much as a whispered warning from my respected parents who went to so much trouble to put me there? Why, nothing but the most unimitigated deference to your wishes, Ma’am, as ever.”

“Hanschen – “ She never used his pet name. He was a little thrown by it. She moved forward to him, took his hand in hers, and worse, _touched his face _. He had difficulty not pushing her away across the room. _How dare she? How dare that wicked old witch touch me? _He was utterly furious, felt dirtied and disgusted by her touching him. “That was why I warned you. I want you to be safe.”____

“And yet, Ma’am, I am in a position where it behoves me to be always at the beck and call of a witch whose very existence endangers all of us, and myself, by reason of my proximity to her, most of all!” 

“Hans, I have endorsed your choice of rooms for Elsa.”

“I had hoped your Majesty would be able to find something more suitable. Perhaps a secluded villa in the wilds of Siberia. One hardly supposes her predilection for uncontrolled ice manufacture would pose a danger in such a region.”

“I understand you perfectly Hans.” Oh, how sincerely he hoped not. He was laying it on with a trowel, and trusting that his mother’s self-involvement would preclude her realising it. “You are right to be alarmed, but –“

“And the trouble I have been put to, to conceal all this from the servants! With what success, I can hardly know, but I would be surprised if it were total.”

“I thank you for it, Hanschen. You have been excellent in your concern for appearances and it will not go unrewarded. I promise you. But I want you to know that I was at great pains to assure myself – and your father – that you would be in no danger. The only unpredictable quantity, I was promised, was consummation of the union – and from that, every nerve was strained, to keep you.”

“You need have no further fears on that head, Ma’am! I’m not quite so cake headed that I’ll be flinging myself into the arms of a snow witch. I’ve no desire to be frozen to death.” Particularly, he mused crown jewels first. Though he’d heard it was a pleasant death. 

“You must trust me,” pleaded his mother. Must was not a word to be addressed to this particular prince, so he ignored it. “The arrangement is absolutely watertight. I drafted it myself.”

“Am I to understand, Ma’am, that you wish me to continue with this charade of a marriage?”

“For a short time longer, Hanschen. We’ve made promises.” Southern Isles promises, he thought. Like pie crust, made to be broken.

“I defer to you in all things, Ma’am. But I do this only out of my deep love and respect for yourself and for my father. My own inclination is to have as little to do with the little ice witch as can be contrived without open dishonour.”

“That is all I ask. I beg you will comport yourself with common courtesy to her. She is our guest and your wife, after all. Do not distress yourself; I believe the problem will be resolved – very soon.”

“Your smallest request guides me, as ever.” He bowed low over her hand, keeping his eyes trained on hers, reading only compassion and honesty there, and took his leave.

Clearly Elsa’s demonstration of her powers had sealed her death warrant with his mother, although he hoped he had persuaded her that he himself wanted the end of the marriage rather more eagerly than anyone else. Perhaps this would result in a small relaxation of surveillance, although his mother’s passion for knowledge didn’t make him overly optimistic.

The worst of it was, he could not think of any safe haven for Elsa; neither her own country nor her own family was any more protective of her than his. He could see no asylum for her, aside from the villa in Siberia, and that was not the life he had in mind for himself. She was the heir to the throne, and he’d seen some very inadequate rulers inherit power before now. She had in addition certain supernatural capabilities which must surely make her a formidable enemy and a highly desirable ally. That this ability was seen as somehow occult and ungodly was in his opinion ridiculous. That it did not appear to be entirely under her control gave him some concern, but Hans had drawn a conclusion about that which he thought might carve out a way forward.

 

Accordingly he busied himself writing letters, smuggling said letters out of the palace without his family’s knowledge, forging a number of letters of credit and acquiring all the solid gold currency he could. He felt no compunction in any of it. The money was less than Elsa was kindly gifting the treasury on an annual basis, and a great deal less than his mother was planning to collect for her poor pretty head on a platter. As for the letters – his mother was exactly like he was. She cared exclusively for getting her own way. In nearly every conflict with her to date, he had come off the loser. But now he was nineteen and he was not prepared to lose this one. She was only motivated by money. For him, it was his whole future at stake. And God knew, if it came down to a straight choice between his harridan mother touching his face ever again and going down in a hail of ice magic or rifle fire with Elsa, he knew absolutely where his preference lay.

 

The palace played host that night to a composer of considerable reputation, who would be debuting his latest sonata and also playing a selection of his other compositions. He was rumoured to be wildly dramatic and romantic, both in his person and his music, and Hans had resolved that he must be particularly eye-catching that evening in order to do anything more than simply register. He needed his mother’s and his wife’s eye upon him in order for any of his trouble to be worth the whistle.

It was therefore with more than customary fastidiousness that he dressed for the evening; he chose his regimentals, which he had observed had a noticeable effect on the fairer sex, sent his boots back twice for re-polishing, and spent so long shaving he started to worry he might not be in time for any of the events of the evening in any case.

The soiree was satisfyingly thronged with the great, the good and the useful. He noted his wife was seated on a low chair at the left hand of his mother. He bowed to both of them and situated himself on the other side of the room, where he could command a reasonable view of both.

The pianist, who wore his hair romantically long and his neckcloth dashingly dishevelled, scowled and played with equal passion, and his music swept up the listeners in its fervour; Elsa was quite transported, sitting enraptured, shIny eyed and barely remembering to breathe, until the end of the sonata, when she was released from the spell enough to recover herself and applaud with genuine enthusiasm. Her eyes were turned to seek out Hans, to magnify her enjoyment by sharing it. Her gaze fell on him, elegantly garbed and smiling, draped over the chair of a slender brunette lady, in an attitude she had no difficulty in deciphering as one of flirtation. The lady in the case kept her face turned towards Hans, but Elsa see her husband’s expressions perfectly; the turn of his smile, the flash of his eyes, the glances he cast from beneath lowered lashes at that stranger. Her own face stiffened, the nascent smile that had illumined it dying there and a little pinch of hurt pulling at her countenance instead.  
Her pleasure in the music evaporated.

It was covered so quickly by her return to applause that it had every chance of passing off unnoticed, but throughout the suite of variations that followed, she could not refrain from looking over at Hans, and every look garnered a little more misery. She suspected the Queen could see her, but couldn’t prevent herself.

Her joy in the evening was over; Hans’ attentions to the lady did not falter; indeed they seemed to wax greater over the progress of time, and when at last the performance drew to its close, she excused herself, claiming a headache she was in fact starting to feel. With a final glance over to where Hans had been, she noticed that the chair was empty, and that Hans had gone as well. She smiled and lifted her chin a little higher as she left the salon.

 

Awaiting her in the hall where the grand staircase led up to the West Wing, Hans was fascinated to observe that the temperature dropped several degrees as she approached, and that along her wake, at intervals, were little crystals of frost.

He cut her off by the balaustrade of the stairs, moving so swiftly from the shadows that she gave a small involuntary scream.

“Don’t be frightened, Elsa, it’s me,” he told her, watching as her face quivered from scared to angry and then to cold. “Not here.” He led her rapidly out through the French windows onto the terrace and then down the steps to the gardens. A stone bench sat, disregarded and overlooked only by the statue of a dryad, in the nook of the staircase, and to this he brought her, pulling her down to sit by him.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean; I should be asking what is it,” she replied in as distinctly haughty a tone as she could manage in a near-whisper. 

“I think something has upset you. Tell me what it is.” Elsa frowned, shook her head back like a bridling pony, and didn’t speak. He leaned forward to her and spoke low in her ear. “Were you jealous, Elsa?” The heat coming off her face alone gave him his answer, although she turned her blue eyes on him flashing with anger, ready to deny it. Then a thought seemed to cross her mind, and her face fell. She looked wretched again, for a second, and then her usual neutral expression returned.

“Of course not. I have been given to understand very strongly by your mother that I must not interfere with what – who you – she says that men have needs that ladies don’t have anything to do with.”

“Gosh, my mother really is a treasure trove of information on me, isn’t she? I never thought she really knew me. And of course, if this is what she told you, she really doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Elsa darling, that she sent me some girl and I sent her away. I mean that my mother tells you what she wants you to think, not what is actually true.”

“You looked as if you – liked that lady you were with very well, tonight. Your mother didn’t tell me that.”

“Yes, she is a very nice lady, and I enjoyed flirting with her. But she is somebody else’s wife.” This was no time to tell Elsa that so far someone else’s wife constituted his whole amorous experience. He was hoping she would assume he wasn’t that sort of man, and interpret his remarks accordingly.

Her expression softened a little, though it retained a shade of suspicion.

“But – why were you flirting with her, then?”

“It can be diverting, you know. And it got us both out of that room without my mother suspecting we’re together.”

“Where’s the lady?”

“I had to beg her to do me the favour of remaining in the gardens until I returned for her. She thinks it’s very romantic.” Which indicated something missing in her thought processes, since he had actually palmed her off on Torsten. Heaven could probably see what they were up to, but Hans was pretty grateful he couldn’t. 

Elsa was regarding him with a renewal of tenderness.

“I was jealous. I know it’s undignified.”

“I must be tragically lacking in dignity, then. I’m jealous of everybody you talk to, every single person you dawdle about with, sharing your smiles and your time and your attention. I wanted to run that etiquette tutor through when I heard him say he’d touched you, and when Torsten did I told him that if he tried anything like it again, I would. And I meant it, Elsa.” He had drawn closer to her ear, inch by infintesimal inch, and now he was breathing his words into the very shell of it. He kissed her earlobe. Hearing a happy sigh, he kissed her jawline and her cheek, and turned her face so he could kiss her mouth. Judging by the sweetness with which she received him, she had abandoned at least one layer of modesty. 

After an enjoyable interval of soft, open mouthed kisses that had first turned her body to him and then resulted in her decision that she would resituate herself on his lap, he slipped his tongue into her mouth and felt it tremble at the audacity. He drew back, as her hands twined into his hair. She opened her eyes but they stayed downcast so he couldn’t see their expression. Her voice was very low when she spoke.

“Do it again.” 

“If you want.” She nodded. He leaned in, angling his head – then paused. “Wait.” He put his hands to her arms, brought her hands down and began to strip off her gloves. 

“Oh – should you?” was the most protest his languid princess could muster.

“Yes, darling, I really should. I can’t be kissing a woman who thinks I’m afraid of her. It puts me off fearfully.” 

So Elsa surrendered her gloves and replaced her hands in his hair, in exchange for another five minutes of concentrated kissing. Hands, her husband was relieved to confirm, which were only as cold as ungloved hands in a garden at night should ordinarily be.

Which was exactly as he had hoped.


	7. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret meetings and Plans and a Problem

Poison is a woman’s weapon perhaps because a woman’s intended victim is frequently also a woman. Easy enough to despatch men by violent means; they spend so much time outdoors, that an accident can be easily managed. Easy to stage a mishap hunting, or shooting range, on a yacht or horseback. With women these chances are far fewer, it seemed to Hans, and accordingly it was poison he feared most for Elsa. It would appear to be a wasting illness, perhaps, or a sudden, violent bout of scarlet fever; a tubercular complaint or a sudden internal disorder; and everybody would agree that she had never been strong, that hers was a constitution all too vulnerable to sudden distempers, which had been unable to resist the sudden horrible illness that had put an end to her. Also, if she was an elemental sorceress, open attack would provoke instinctive defence; guile would be called for to despatch her.

It troubled him, further, that he could not tell Elsa his fears. Nothing stood in the way of it, but he thought it could all too easily lead to a conversation that might end revealing the details of the contract, or some similar subject that would make her aware that she had already been written off by the family she continued to write dutiful, affectionate, heart-breakingly hopeful letters to. She might be able to form the words that said she knew what her Papa would have to do to her if she weren’t “cured”, but she was far too soft-hearted not to take it to heart, and she had already done plenty of that. He did not wish her so utterly emotionally ruined by her family’s coldness that she would never be able to feel anything again. He was rather in favour of Elsa’s slightly moonstruck fondness for himself, and although this might survive utter betrayal by her parents, it might equally fall victim to her sense of duty when she opted to immolate herself on a shard of self-made ice. 

He had considered other options – the younger Princess, for instance – but he had no guarantee he would be first in line for her, and she was not quite fourteen. The wait was long for a long shot, particularly when he had the other princess in his pocket. And the other princess was very pretty, very persuadable and very kissable, with impressive powers which he assumed the boring younger one lacked, or doubtless his mother would have expected him somehow to marry himself to both of them and probably take the fall as a bigamist after a messy murder suicide. Time had accustomed him to set no limits on his mother’s imagination.

There was also the fact that Hans himself had never been involved in causing a political death. The family black sheep, Torsten, had been on the voyage that proved fatal for Ludwig, and Hans assumed that he was probably the son on whom his mother would rely, and there was a tiny star-sized piece of hope, for in a family where the customary helping of brains was a decent pudding-basin size, Torsten appeared to have only accomplished enough matter to fill a slightly large matchbox, and no craftsman is better than his tools. 

 

So he encouraged Elsa to dine alone in her room and bribed the servants, and when he could, insisted on foods of whose provenance he could be absolutely certain, observing very publicly that the princess’s appetite was finicky and she could barely stomach anything.

However, since Elsa was infinitely pliant when offered the incentive of kissing, he was able to maintain a high number of meetings with her – in effect whenever she was not taking great care to be seen far away from him in the salon, or the gardens, or with her card playing coterie, Elsa was to be found secreted in some corner of the palace or the gardens with her heart palpitating like a bird’s and her mouth taking intoxicating instruction from that of her husband.

An unforeseen consequence of all this kissing was an increase in bloom; obliged to keep her distance from Hans in public, she added to his wish for discretion by developing a magnificent flair for flirtation. It was soon the on dit of her friends, that she liked to flirt nearly as well as she liked cards. When Hans told her of this, between breathless kisses stolen at her door, she shook her head in astonishment.

“But how utterly absurd!” she exclaimed. “How could anybody ever like flirting better than cards?” Her spouse stroked a hand down the side of her neck.

“Hm … what about kissing?”

“They don’t know about that,” she objected. “Oh – well;” she temporised, taking his meaning, “well, kissing is different. I may like kissing a little better than cards. Sometimes.” Hans forbore to say that in a straight choice between them he’d bet both their lives on kissing winning. “I am very strict about flirting, anyway. I take great care to flirt with several people and not let them see me alone, so they won’t think I intend it to lead to further things.”

“Good.”

“What would happen if it did lead to further things?” she enquired.

“Duelling is strictly speaking illegal, so I wouldn’t be able to call them out,” he replied, a little bitterly.

“But you wouldn’t want to, would you?” He reflected.

“I would be immensely displeased.”

“But you should be immensely displeased with me, if I’d kissed someone else. It’s very wrong to duel,” she added, a little anxiously. “You wouldn’t really want to, would you?” He looked at her with the usual mixture of wonder and confusion she inspired in him. Of course he would want to. He would have a decent chance of winning in any fair fight, and he did not like being crossed. Worse, he knew exactly what happened if you didn’t send a strong message immediately to anybody who did cross you.

“There wouldn’t be the opportunity.”

“I wouldn’t ever kiss anybody but you.” 

“You are very kind to save me from myself,” he said, only half in jest. With a change in tone, he added - “I intend to ask you to dance at the ball tonight. You will see me at my most impressively hypocritical, as I shall be performing to impress my mother with my immense indifference to your fate.”

“Can’t you tell her? Tell her that – well, we’ve been meeting and I haven’t hurt you?” This was precisely the solution that Elsa might be depended on to come up with. It had not even occurred to him. His mother claimed she was keeping them apart for his good. If he could prove his good was in no way threatened, she should let them be together. It all made sense, except that Hans didn’t believe his mother’s only motivation was his safety. 

She had shown two particular traits increasingly markedly as she had grown old and he had grown up; one was an interest in strengthening the financial well-being of the kingdom, which often seemed to mean simply securing more income to the crown, and the other was a desire to maintain her younger sons at home and at her beck and call, and not sent off to make the diplomatic marriages that she had so distinctly favoured for the older tranche. Hans couldn’t be sure it wasn’t over-suspiciousness, but he felt it likely that Elsa’s death would provide his mother with more than one source of satisfaction, and that these would outweigh any wish to keep her hands clean.

“I fear my mother hears exactly what she wishes.”

“She does not really wish for me to be married to you,” Elsa confirmed to herself sadly.

“She would like me to stay home and do as I am told. But I have decided I would prefer to be your secretary than hers. I am awaiting a message, Elsa, and it may come by tonight. It is important, so if it arrives, I shall ask you to dance. Keep a waltz free for me.” He put an end to the interview by kissing her hand, and she slipped into her room as he left.

 

News of the receipt of an epistle threatening Elsa’s assassination greeted him in his dressing room, courtesy of one of the heavily bribed servants, though given the nature of the message, he expected his mother would have ensured it reached him by some means. A note on her personal stationery was delivered hard on the heels of the first revelation. He admired her statecraft. It was intelligent to distract everybody with a threat from without, so they would not be watching for the threat from within. 

He also had the letter he had been awaiting, however, and at last he could make his move. Scented, dressed and dandified to a peak of overdone fashion, he made his way to the ballroom.

 

Torsten was very much in evidence, smarming round Helena, which Hans found surprising. Dolph had probably been called away on urgent business by his eldest brother, whose self-importance found an outlet in ordering people around, rather like his mother. It was ridiculously unjust, he mused, how many perfectly nice people Gundar had running about tending on his whims. Henrietta spent far too much time indulging his self-importance, and nowadays Dolph was obliged to join this rodomontade as well. 

After an obligatory circuit of the room, where he flirted with the lady of whom Torsten had made a temporary conquest, and who gave every sign of willingness to resume their façade of coquetry, and where he spoke with serious eyes and flippant words with his mother, continuing his treble-meaning conversation about Elsa’s safety, and made a tacit offer of intercession to rescue Helena, which she politely rebuffed, he arrived – to his well-acted surprise – at a knot of people including his wife.

“Madam,” he said, sweeping a low bow over her hand, with an expression of utter hauteur. “I did not see you. A thousand pardons.”

“Perhaps you did not see me, sir, because you did not wish to.” Elsa’s theatrics at least equalled his own, her voice sunk low with colourings of reproach and humiliation.

“Not the case at all, I assure you.” He glanced around the room, the picture of barely courteous boredom. “I beg you will honour me for this dance.” Her skirts billowed around her as she curtseyed, head dropped in consent.

“I shall be delighted, sir,” she responded, impressed by his air of unspeakable distain. Had she not earlier had his declaration that she would not recognise him from his manner, she would have been too terrified to reply.

When they were safely out on the dancefloor he held her close and spoke low.

“I have received the message I hoped for. I need you to trust me absolutely.”

“Of course I do. What follows?”

“Excuse yourself early and meet me at the west door of the rose garden. Moonlight ride, so wear breeches. I shall wait for you there after twelve.”

“The lights on the trees in the rose garden are so pretty,” she replied artlessly.

“Indeed. But they are tragically unobserved by many, many of the palace’s inhabitants. It is a great shame that so few of the guests – and none of the staff – ever seem to view them.”

“Do they view the sea, from the ramparts by the outside of the wall?”

“You might expect any soul to draw solace from such a view. But few avail themselves of it; such susceptibility belongs only to those of Royal blood.” They exchanged a few more glances of assumed dislike (him) and haughtiness concealing hurt feelings (her) and the waltz drawing to an end, he returned her to her bevy of friends, wishing her a very good night.

 

The garden appeared as brilliantly lit as a fairyland, to Hans’ eyes that night. He would have picked a darker place for a rendezvous, but the West Door gave onto the place nearest the stables, and they would be quicker on horseback. The door was unfortunately illuminated around the outside arch as well as the inner, but it was only for a moment. It was scarcely worth worrying about. It did cause him to cut short his greeting to Elsa, and to hasten her on, out of the gate with as much rapidity as possible, knowing they were for a few moments exposed in silhouette against the last lights of the garden.

Something happened.

He suffered the most extraordinary sensation, as though the world had exploded in him, as if he was at the centre of a lightning strike; a fantastic thunderclap accompanied the feeling of somehow being involved in a detonation. He had no other sensation, but realised he could not speak or move, he was too numbed and disoriented to exert himself physically in any way. 

Consequently, he felt his legs fold and he was crumpling up like burning paper and hitting the ground with another thunderclap, but without pain or any other sensation except one of the world being somehow muffled and distant. He supposed, distantly, he was severely injured.

“Where are you hurt?” The voice was Elsa’s, far away above his head. He was lying on the ground and Elsa was ripping at his neckcloth – dammit that knot had taken the spoiling of two neckclothes to achieve. How annoying. 

She had the neckcloth off, and the collar of his shirt open; he tried to ask her where he was hit, but no sound came out of his mouth, other than a sort of wheezy sub-whisper. Other people were there – he wasn’t sure who – then Dolph snapped into his view, but Elsa was not letting him closer.

She was accusing Dolph of something nefarious. She was protecting him from Dolph. 

“Hans – brandy? Have you got anything in your pockets?”

Again he tried to speak and failed. He could taste and feel blood, dribbling from his mouth; apparently he was drooling blood. Dolph spoke for him, and Elsa rifled his pockets and was unscrewing his hipflask, and just as he was forming the thought that actually he was not thirsty, she was dribbling it over his shoulder or his neck – wherever it was – and he felt a wonderful cooling, refreshing feeling as it splashed over the wound.

Elsa was arguing with Dolph. He heard the word “Goldwing” and deduced the argument was about where he was to be taken. Next he heard the words “neck wound” and supposed he was done for. The wound was too high up not to have damaged him mortally – and he still felt little pain. Though at the thought that he would die, he felt intensely angry. Just as the situation was about to take such a dramatic turn for the better. 

His wife appeared to have pulled rank on his brother, who was, he realised dimly as he was picked up by him, only just not crying. That some tears had already spilled was clear from the streaks on his unusually grubby face. The princess in charge clearly felt no pity for him whatsoever, and had improvised some sort of sling. 

Hans began to think around then that perhaps he wasn’t done for after all, for after Elsa had mounted Sitron, which she did without assistance or a mounting block, through sheer strength of will and the power of shock, for he had never seen her manage such a feat before, he was heaved after her by Dolph, and that hurt like hell. Elsa tied him to her, and nudged Sitron on to a steady walk. Dolph was saying something, but he only heard his wife’s response.

“If you wish to be of help, some more alcohol and bandages and a doctor to the boat.” In his own ear, she said, “We are in the hands of God and your horse now.”

He wanted to quip that at least one of them could be counted on, but he continued unable to contrive any speech, so he let himself lean on Elsa’s small, bone still, hard armed frame, and let the strange half-conscious thoughts chase each other in circularity around his head.

At the docks, Elsa once again took charge, ordering the men from the ship, entreating them to be careful of him, welcoming the doctor whom Dolph had rather surprisingly located, and overlooking the casting off. 

The doctor stripped off Elsa’s makeshift bandage, examined the wound, and raised him up to examine the other side of his neck. “Went straight through. He’s got the luck of the devil.” He smiled, pale and gruesome. Wasn’t that the truth. “You need to stay away from the front line for a while, but in six weeks, you’ll be right as rain. – Keep it clean, keep him fed and warm and rested. Nature will right the rest.”

And then he was gone, and Elsa was ordering the ship to sail. 

“As quickly as we can out of the harbour, and make for Arendelle.”

He groaned, loudly. She turned to him, still propped on the deck. “What?” She took his hand. “Is it somewhere else?” He squeezed her hand. “Where?” The letter, it was in his pocket. 

“Pocket,” he said. It sounded like no word in the world, but Elsa seemed to realise what he meant, for her hands checked his waistcoat and jacket, locating the letter with the Arendelle seal upon it with a sudden look of excitement. She unfolded it, face lightening every moment at what she read. After the few seconds requisite to realising its meaning, she leant forward to him, holding his face gently in her hand, and looked him full in the face as she spoke.

“You have saved my life more than once tonight. On the life I owe you, I will move any mountain I have to, to save yours.”

He felt the choppy waters of the harbour give way to the deep swell of the sea under the keel, and drew a deep sigh of relief. At least they had surmounted one obstacle, and his wound wishing him asleep, he succumbed and under the stars, and his brother’s coat, and Elsa’s ministrations, he drifted off.


	8. All At Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which deals with family matters

The first day on the sea was merciless to Elsa. She did not suffer from seasickness – it was no lie when she claimed to be very healthy – but her anxiety about the situation she found herself in was acute, and it resulted in sudden hours of unremitting migraine; first her sight would begin to sparkle and bubble bright pastel colours of light, and she would feel as if she was slipping sideways out of her own viewpoint of the world, into a place where she wasn’t either in it or of it, unable to reason or even to understand why she should, and the kind of pain that felt like pure, burning light lasered through her head on two or three different axes, one from her left eye to the back of her head and another from the base of her skull through her brain, as if she were being butchered by shards of lightning. 

The terror of loss of control was almost worse than the physical pain; she sought refuge in her cabin when she could, but remained conscious that she must play the role of commander on board; she, a girl whose sailing experience was limited to the few times she had been taken out as a child, before she had withdrawn to a regime of secrecy and ice cold baths and leeches to reduce her powers; and whose information on ruling had been curtailed by her father’s growing anger with her from the time of the accident with Anna, when he had told her she was “getting out of hand” and from which time he had seemed disinclined to instruct on the art of ruling, seeming more preoccupied with the disguise of her powers; she was now in charge of this vessel, making for a geographical point she did not wholly understand. There was a measure of latitude and longitude, and they were to rendezvous there at a predetermined hour, and they sailed that way with all speed. She devoutly hoped.

Her best relief was caring for Hans. She did not feel any animosity towards him for landing her in this situation; like him, she considered it likely that Dolph’s bullet had been intended for her, and without being privy to the machinations that surrounded her, Elsa fully comprehended that a creature as unGodly and unnatural as herself should expect ordinary people to attempt to destroy her. She knew she deserved it. At the same time, she felt secretly very angry that she deserved it, because after all, she had not asked to be powerful, she simply was. And many other kinds of power, as her husband had pointed out to her, were respected. Sometimes Elsa wondered darkly if it would all have been quite different if she had been a son, rather than a daughter, with such abilities.

There was no point dwelling on the point, however; she was a daughter, which seemed unlikely to change. And Hans had told her he thought her powers were remarkable, and said they could be used for good, and that something is as good as what you do with it, and not either good or bad in and of itself. And she preferred to believe Hans.

So she did not reproach him with their situation; the reverse, she was glad to have the chance to reciprocate some of his kindness. During the past year, he had drawn her out with patience and gentleness, and she supposed he had tamed her a little. She was grateful for his kindness to her, and prepared to overlook some of his more morally questionable statements in light of it. And now he was in need both of her care, which she lavished on him unstintingly, and her ability to take command, which she did as well as she could.

Her husband mainly slept, and since the weather kept fine she had the crew make his bed up on deck – she found below decks to be dark and queasy-making. It smelt unpleasantly stale and salty at the same time, and she did not think it conducive to health. She also wanted to be able to get a good look at the wound when she changed the dressing. It looked unpleasant, but it did not smell of decay, and it looked like it was blood and healing that was going on, rather than decay and disaster.

She had been obliged to go to the galley to examine the food preparation, and had been pleasantly surprised to find it very clean and well fitted out, and less pleasantly unsurprised to find the supplies very dull indeed. She demanded that Prince Hans should be supplied with fresh fish broth, setting lines overboard to catch said fish, commandeered the best of the supplies of limes and lemons for the manufacture of lemonade, which she found she had to mix with Schnapps to make it even vaguely palatable, and oversaw the making of the fish broth. It was tasty, in an unsubtle way, and it was full of fish and potatoes and onions, which she hoped would make it nourishing and restorative of bullet wounds to the neck.

She woke him on three separate occasions, hauling him upright to pour water and lemonade down him and attempt to persuade him to eat, though this was without success; she even attempted to haul him up again to stand; she did not want him falling into a habit of inertia; but he was too weak to remain awake, still less scramble to his feet. He urged her to procure some letters and she promised to do everything he repeated to her, all of which she found obscure and had little chance of complying with therefore, because he had a strange kind of hold over her by virtue of his ill-health.

Had she but known it, her exhaustive, tigress-fierce care for her Prince did her more good with the crew than all the royal dignity in the world could ever have done; they saw her loyalty and her intelligence and determination, but they also saw her ferocious maternal instinct in the way she cared for her husband. She was two months shy of her seventeenth birthday, but they treated her with the respect they would have used had she been thirty years older and Hans’ real mother. Not one of them was under any illusion about what treatment he would receive if his behaviour halted her care of the prince in any way; not one of them would have found it anything but right.

By the grey cool dawn of the second day, Hans was showing signs of recovery. He woke of his own volition, realised he was on the deck of the Gullwing, and rolled over; and finding Elsa wrapped in her travelling cloak asleep beside his makeshift bed, poked a hand out from under the fur rug and shook at her shoulder until she joined him.

“You’re awake!” 

“Groggy and thirsty, but conscious,” he conceded. “It is uncomfortable. Is that healing?”

“I hope so,” replied Elsa, hastening to pour him some water, She had improvised a little table from a small barrel, where he noticed she had made notes, and placed two oranges, a sturdy mug and his hipflask. The water was cool; she had frosted the outside of the mug. 

“Where are we?” 

“Very near to the rendezvous. Last night the readings were 55 degrees 48 north and 6 degrees 25 East. We’ve been making North at a steady speed of 18 knots since ten last night.”

“You can navigate at sea?”

“I can now. I made the captain show me.”

“You did not,” Hans told her with sudden energy. “Anderssen may be acting captain, but I am the Goldwing’s captain.”

“Do you think you are up to taking command again?” Elsa’s question was gentle, but she had a point. He was still in considerable pain, and he had no doubt moving about would worsen it. 

“Do I even need to,” he chafed her, “when my wife and my lieutenant have been so capable in my absence? I’d like to check the calculations.”

Elsa submitted the notes from the table, rolling up her cloak and shoving it down behind him to help prop him up; leaving him poring over the charts she went to fetch Anderssen and the chronometer to him, as he would be busy taking charge until he keeled over now. 

“I think we will be within two hours of achieving our first object, and accordingly I shall go below and change my dress.”

“I honour your circumspection. There are some shocks no flesh should be heir to, and to some persons I must suppose those shocks must include you in breeches. Wear the blue; it makes you look more regal.”

“If I were looking to appear regal, I would wear the diamond coronet; I shall wear something modest,” she countered, favouring him with a very flirtatious look over her shoulder as she bobbed out of sight into the cabin.

She was free to contemplate the advancing meeting with less anxiety now, and feel the wholehearted pleasure she did without guilt or fear. The improvement in Hans put new heart in her; she could spend her time with him on board without disapproving surveillance, and could demonstrate her fondness without condemnation. She almost loved him because he allowed her affection without rejection, without causing her to contemplate the worthlessness of what she felt or had to offer. It did not occur to Elsa to rate this low; nobody had wanted Elsa’s feelings before, at all, except her sister, who had pestered her endlessly with attempts to restore their relationship to the same footing as before the accident, while Elsa knew that she was too dangerous for children to be close to. Anna had only wanted to be her sister because she didn’t know about the accident. It had broken her heart not to be able to play with Anna; on that day her childhood had ended, and she had never looked back. Back was happiness to which she was not entitled, and love she had failed to reciprocate in a proper, ordinarily safe way.

Hans’ viewpoint on the accident had given her food for thought. He did not think she was possessed, or evil, or deserved to be locked away. He did not fear her in the slightest. She could not entirely approve of Hans – he had an ease with bending the truth that she would have found actually unbelievable had she not observed him closely enough to confirm its existence for herself. After his mother’s warning she had watched him carefully and she knew that what he told her was frequently the opposite of what he had said to somebody else. He did not have any respect for his parents, and little for his brothers, which seemed unChristian and reprehensible. He was nearly always flippant in a very sincere tone of voice, which again seemed to point to an unseemly levity of character at best.

But he was the only person in her entire life who knew the worst and accepted her without caveat or reproach. Her heart lightened when she saw him, because she felt that all her problems were soluble, and that he would take on her fears and either laugh them off or destroy what caused them. With him, she could imagine a life that was a success. Without him, she might be obliged to go away, where her father had proposed, to the North Mountain, abandon her kingdom and disappear into the wastes of the snow where nobody ventured and her powers might do no harm.

In the meanwhile, she shucked off her bloodstained breeches and shirt, washed herself down and chose a dark dress with a higher neck than favoured at the Southern Isles Court, before fastening her diamond pin into her hair and rejoining her husband on deck. 

Her Prince made a face at her. 

“What is that face supposed to indicate?”

“That I’m remaining not dead for the nonce. I’d rather you weren’t wearing widows weeds just yet.”

“I’m not. It’s a very dark violet. I have to clean you up and I wanted something that would show that as little as possible.” And in defiance of his protest that he was not even that near to being dead, she demanded he strip off his shirt, and replace it with clean linen. She ceded that Anderssen might dress him, but the wound she insisted on cleaning and re-dressing herself.

“You lay claim to all the plum jobs, as always,” commented her patient, before refusing to allow her to shave him and having Anderssen do it instead. Afterwards he observed that in the navy it was almost de rigeur to go bearded and he was rapidly remembering why.

And then they were at the rendezvous point, alone on the wide dark sea except for the luminous sky and birds wheeling above and uttering warning cries, with no other vessel in sight.

 

The Arendellian drew into view around noon, and Elsa’s hands went into agitated over-excitement at the first distant appearance of the ship against the Northern sky. She spent nearly an hour at the railing, watching her progress towards them, eye squinting down the telescope she had gained from Anderssen, and feet nearly dancing with anticipation.

Hans called her away at length, telling her that if she fell overboard she would sink like a stone in that dress, and he wasn’t feeling well enough to dive after her. She returned to his side and took his hand, possibly in the misguided belief that she could pass some of her enthusiasm on to him through contact.

“It’s been such a long time! I have missed them so much! And I am so deeply hoping that you will like each other. I wish they might see you first uninjured, that they would have the initial impression of you –“ she nearly said “at your best”, but then feared what that might mean; “as fully capable as you are.”

“Dearest, I shall endeavour to impress them deeply with my complete competence to deal with the events that may befall us. We have brushed through well enough so far.”

“Are we setting aside you being shot?”

“It’s the price, I fear. I’m still here.” Her hand squeezed his tightly and she held it to her for a moment. 

“I hope the price has been paid in full. I do not like such anxiety.” 

He smiled and kissed her hand. It had been disagreeable, but hopefully the worst was over. He was, in a warped way, looking forward to meeting his parents-in-law. He anticipated nothing good from people who showed such dislike towards his Princess, but was interested in what kind of people might justify their behaviour to her.

 

Finally the Arendellian hove alongside the Gullwing, and Elsa was in a state of delight she covered only with superhuman effort. Still, her face was arranged in a prim expression of polite approval, rather than wreathed in rapturous smiles, as she first saw the faces of her parents. Their expressions were similarly fixed, Hans was glad to see; from some of the things Elsa had let slip he had feared they would be total strangers to formality and there might be quite abnormal displays of emotion which would make him at the least uncomfortable.

“Your Majesties, I ask your indulgence – will you wait on us? Our hospitality must be inferior, but I fear my husband is not equal to the short journey. He has been unwell.”

Their Majesties acquiesced, and had soon hurried over the short board laid between the ships to exchange greetings at closer quarters. Hans bowed, Elsa curtsied, their Majesties smiled stiffly and they adjourned to the cabin. 

“Please be seated,” Hans invited.

“You must sit, as well,” said Elsa, pushing at him to get him closer to a chair. “You are not well enough to stand.”

“We insist,” echoed Agdar, with an enquiring look at Hans.

“He has taken a bullet to the neck,” explained Elsa. “It was an accident with Dolph. Prince Adolphus.” Hans was speechless; he had had the strong impression that Elsa had not credited Dolph’s excuses, had plainly been inclined to anger rather than acceptance. Perhaps reflection had made her think better of it, but he was damned if he didn’t think he’d just heard Elsa utter a euphuemism so calculated as to qualify as a falsehood. 

“I am sorry,” responded Agdar. “I hope you are not in too much pain.”

“I have had worse with a stubbed toe,” replied Hans roundly. Only passing out would actually make him admit to any pain before an untrusted quantity such as this, and he would not pass out unless dying.

“It is such a pleasure to see you again!” exclaimed Elsa. “I have missed your – company, and your counsel, so much!” She was in a sort of pool of warmth, reaching across the cabin, while her parents sat, her father with a frown of seriousness, and her mother looking at her with nervousness leaking from her dress-pleating fingers and the fluttering set of her brow, and the quirking of her mouth. She was strikingly similar to Elsa in gesture, as well as appearance.

Elsa found out the refreshments under Hans’ directions – she had had no idea he had laid in such delicacies as ratafia and little tins of iced biscuits and tiny sugar pastries, clearly for entertainment such as this – and brought them round, presently perching near her mother, bright eyed and hopeful. Idun dredged up a tight, half-meaningful smile for her, which guttered and went out after a few bare moments.

Agdar’s expression remained unbreakably solemn. He had the face of a kind man, but not a hopeful one.

“Your Majesties, I have sought this meeting with the end in view of returning Princess Elsa to her homeland. I believe she has learned all she can from the Southern Isles, and it is time for her to be complete her   
education as a future ruler on her own territory.”

“There are – other issues,” pronounced Agdar, slowly. “I hope I may speak freely. Elsa – when she came to you, had certain problems.”

“They are no longer germane.” Agdar gave him a look indicating that he either didn’t believe him, or thought he was ignorant of what was meant by Elsa’s problems. He spoke plainer.

“What of the curse?”

“She is not cursed, Your Majesty; I understand she has had these powers from as early as she can remember. She is as much a creature of God’s as any of us. And she is happily now able to control her powers with some confidence.” 

Elsa was clearly both irritated and a little upset by the topic of conversation; Hans could see her face fallen into a child’s mask of tragedy as she chewed on a biscuit, eyes trained on the cabin floor.

“And, as she has matured, she has learnt control. Just as she controls the other displays of feeling.” 

Idun reached out to Elsa’s ungloved hand and, as if she were encouraging a rampaging bear, she patted it. Her face softened and her brows peaked with disbelief and enquiry.

“Darling – are you – you’re cured!” she exclaimed. 

“Not precisely, Mama,” responded Elsa, turning her hand to take her mother’s. “But I can choose when I let it – when I use it. I am in control.”

Agdar was looking a question to his queen, who had moved to near tearfulness. She was nodding, and wiping at her eyes with her other hand. “Oh my dear, we never dared to hope! It is not your fault, of course, we know that, but – oh, Elsa!” She pulled Elsa to her in an awkward embrace, which her daughter reciprocated. 

“And the sequence of events that led you to meet us here, in such a secluded place?” asked Agdar. He saw an ambitious, smooth talking prince who had beguiled his unfortunate daughter, and was not entirely convinced it would be for either her good, or that of Arendelle.

“You are aware of the terms of the contract,” replied Hans. “The emolument offered to my mother for the Princess’s cure” he lingered on the word, his emphasis designed to tell Agdar that he knew the exact terms, and had not disclosed them to Elsa – “could so easily prove so attractive that she would stop at nothing to effect it, or to claim its reward. You see how I would seek a safe haven for Elsa, where her progress might not be overturned by wrong-thinking or over zealousness.”

Agdar looked long at him. He looked ingenuously back. So, he thought, this is love. It looked to him like something one was infinitely better off without.

“What do you wish?”

“I request your letters of safe conduct through Arendellian waters, and introduction to the Arendellian people. I would suggest we make harbour at Kristiansborg, which is near enough to offer some quiet respite. The Princess can consolidate her control, and I shall sketch some arrangements for her re-introduction to Arendelle. She was much admired in the Court of my homeland, and I dare say she will be just as successful in her own. We will await your return to enter in the city.”

“Do you not sail back with us?” asked Elsa.

“We are bound for Corona, darling. Your cousin is to be married.”

“Am I not invited?”

“No, and your sister remains at home as well. Whole families of royalty cannot billet themselves on people without notice, my love.” Idun patted her hand again, clearly with great satisfaction.

“Your husband has great foresight, daughter,” observed Agdar drily. “We made a good choice.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

 

The Crown Princess quitted the Gullwing with her honoured father to collect the papers, escorted by Anderssen who was interested to inspect the superior boat’s instruments. When he had finished his writing, sanded the ink, and sealed them with the Royal Seal, he gave them to her with a brief word of warning.

“Your husband – Prince Hans.”

“Yes, Papa?”

“Very, very polished, Elsa. You should be wary of things that are too polished. They can be slippery. Hard to hold onto.” She did not entirely take his meaning, but bobbed a curtsey to convey agreement. “Be careful of him, Elsa. He is so very sharp, somebody is bound to get cut. – Now, be a good girl, and we will see you in a month.”

Her mother hugged her again, and cried a little more – it was such a relief to Idun to see that her daughter might yet be loved, be allowed to rule, be able to rule herself – it was a dread she had lived with for sixteen years, and any improvement in Elsa’s prospects was balm to her anxiety.

Agdar gave her a handshake and told her he hoped to hear more good of her when he returned, though his demeanour rather implied he was not entirely hopeful.

Elsa returned to Hans, the gangplank was taken up, and the ships signalled each other farewell as they sailed away from one another, the Gullwing only a little delayed in her departure, by picking up the man who had gone out in the dinghy fishing during the hiatus of the meeting.


	9. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa gets to know Hans a little better. One way or another.

On the whole, the day was not unfolding too badly, he reflected lazily. He continued dull of thought and heavy of movement, and his neck felt like it had been trampled by a small cavalcade of iron-shod ponies, but the sun shone softly through the breeze that filled the sails, occasional seagulls wheeled overhead crying out unimportant warnings, and his boots were surviving the sea air with remarkable shininess. His head lay in the lap of his beautiful besotted betrothed, at present combing her fingers through his hair and gazing down as if he were a lap full of angel. She was talking in low and languid tones to him about nothing very much. He was only prevented from falling asleep by a disinclination to miss any of the enjoyment of the adoring caresses, which he felt were a very worthwhile addition to Elsa’s accomplishments. She was occasionally emboldened to extend her touch to his face, the first time to remove what he profoundly believed was a pretended mote of dust, and on subsequent forays plainly as a guilty indulgence she was hoping he wouldn’t notice she was granting herself.

He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, folding her fingers shut over it and holding it to his cheek. 

“I daresay I shouldn’t be doing that. I’m surprised you haven’t tried to stop me.” She hadn’t tried to stop him for over a week, not since he had kissed her on the stone bench. Her hands were so much better.

“Why would I?”

“Oh – you know. Or maybe you don’t; it’s probably not a suitable on dit for a lady’s ears. About the gloves.”

“Do you mean my gloves?” she enquired, puzzled.

“No, mine. There’s a myth that – well, you must surely have noticed that I am one of a healthy sized brood of princes.”

“Y-es.”

“So they say that the Westergards are so extremely – successful in the siring of children that no woman should even shake hands with them in case she falls pregnant. And that hence the gloves.”

“That is unsuitable for ladies,” she replied demurely. He watched her with amusement, but also with a feeling of security and comfort that was unfamiliar and pleasant to him. This must be what being a cat was like, and he luxuriated in it. It was strange to find that being shot, a highly disagreeable experience, resulted in a degree of care that was the first time in years he felt truly valued and cherished, but such seemed to be the case.

To his surprise and self-disgust, the Prince was fatigued by his interview with the King and Queen of Arendelle. It had baffled him. He could not understand what had happened.

Having spent his life making sure he did not have to do disagreeable things and in pursuit of the power to do what he wanted and what he did well, and garner as much praise and adulation for doing it as he conceivably could, he was disappointed to note that Agdar and Idun looked very much like living proof that you had to do some very disagreeable things even if you attained as much power as anyone could. Hans congratulated himself on his relative lack of finer feelings, because he thought that if he had been as troubled by a child as they had clearly been by Elsa, she would have been disposed of long before she attained adolescence, but he did not think he would have been as bothered by her as had her parents. Elsa’s most problematic characteristics were, in his opinion, entirely the result of her parents’ upbringing. She was horribly, disturbingly honest and honourable, deeply religious, and believed she deserved nothing good, or to have any contact with people, ever. He really blamed her parents.

If she never gave birth to anything but tiny red-headed sons with ice powers, so be it; Hans could see definite advantage in it. 

But what he could not make any sense of, was that behind the fear and the caution, he had been well able to realise that he was in the presence of deep and certain affection. He knew well that Elsa adored her parents, but – surprisingly, in light of what they had done to her – they really loved her. Her mother was terrified of her, and still wanted to hug her close; her father thought she was somehow sullied, spiritually or personally, by what she was, but he wished he could save her, and lived with the soul-shrivelling certainty that he could not. The cabin had been dense with genuine family love, but love so limited by the characters of those involved that it had no more practical value than the cool assessment and emotional indifference of his own mother and father. Even acknowledging a sort of moral superiority to their feelings over those of his family, he could see no advantage to these feelings whatsoever.

Whether it was his reflections on the strangeness of the Arendellian Royal family’s sentiments, or the soothing nature of lying in Elsa’s lap being spoiled, Hans was uncharacteristically unconscious of the building bank of storm clouds piling dark and louring closer through the latter part of the day, and he was alerted to the oncoming squall by Anderssen, who advised him to get under cover. 

The storm set in fierce and sudden from the southwest, the bank of clouds rolling rapidly in obscuring and cancelling the sunset, and as the accelerated dusk fell they were in the middle of it.

Elsa attended Hans into his cabin, which was hers, because she would not permit him to go below deck, insisting she would stay beside him until he was completely out of danger, which he hoped and trusted would not occur at any point before he was thirty.

The cabin was awkward due to its size; Elsa seated him on the bunk, which made him feel impatient and queasy as the ship began the rolling and creaking that marked the full onset of the storm, but was startlingly improved by her losing her footing, tottering into him and ending up in his arms with only the tiniest discomfort to his neck. 

“Ow – have a care to the wound, your Highness.” 

“Did I hurt you?” She shone with anxiety; he shook his head. 

“No. But you should seek your bunk; this is going to be rough for the next period.”

“Don’t make me leave you. I don’t want to be alone – if anything happens,” she pleaded, and somehow she had snuggled into his side, fitting into the bunk in a way that he was surprised was possible. She hesitated with her face against his lapel, nudging her nose into the uninjured side of his neck, before pulling herself half upright and unpinning her hair. He had time to ask himself what on earth is she about? Why is she loosening her hair? Before it was falling over her shoulders and around her face and curtaining the room from his view as she pounced on him and they were kissing, and he realised that she had instigated it. Elsa never instigated kissing; it was one of the unwritten rules of their agreement to pretend that she was above desire, except when she wasn’t, when she broke off and fled to her room. But she was pressed against him and she was also talking, and she was saying what Hans would have said had he been trying to persuade her into consummation. “I don’t want to lose you – I have been so scared for you – you like me, you want to stay with me, don’t you?” And the hand she wasn’t leaning on, usually kept modestly in her lap, never straying below his face or hair, was sliding under his coat, against him, stroking over his waistcoat and round his back.

“Elsa, this is not prudent – “

“Yes, it is prudent. It is prudent for me. I want to do it, and I want it to be irreversible. Don’t you want to – to -? Do you think I – can’t -?”

“Oh no, Elsa, I feel deeply certain, especially at this moment, that you can.” I can feel how hot your hands are right through two layers of linen, he considered telling her. 

“Then I want you to.” Good God, she’d arrived at an act politique. He’d never have suspected she had it in her. She might turn out to enjoy the act itself, though this felt like it would be an awkward, lurching impulsive encounter, but what Elsa was focused on was a future, a future with him, and that was quite frankly the most weakeningly erotic thing he’d ever encountered. His resistance to what was going to be a ruinously awkward introduction to the pleasures of the marriage bed was seriously dented. He still felt tired and ill, but he also felt an armful of passionately desirous princess pressed tightly to him and wanting to give him a surety of what he wanted most; an indissoluble bond to a shared future. He was going to make a horrible mess of this, but it wasn’t going to matter, because that was not even remotely what Elsa was in pursuit of.  
He pulled her down on him and kissed her back as soundly as she was kissing him. The ship rolled again, and she gave a breathless giggle as they were thrown bruisingly together, and pulled apart to check one another for injury. The cabinet overhead swung open with a creak, and Hans reached up a hand to slap it shut as its contents rumbled, rolling over, and another wrench of the ship’s direction unsteadied his hand so the wooden cylinder dropped out and onto the pillow, narrowly missing their heads. He nearly swore. Elsa picked it up from the pillow, and her whole demeanour changed. He nearly swore again, for he remembered what he had stored in that cabinet.

She sat up, staring at what she held in her hand, and then, frowningly, at him.

“Why do you have this?”

“Your father gave it to me.” She regarded him with flat disbelief. That her father would hand over the Royal Seal of Arendelle to anybody he had never met before, even vouched for by his daughter, was hard to credit; that he would do so with so little ceremony or even telling herself, at a secret rendezvous in the middle of the North Sea was unbelievable.

“This never leaves the hand of the ruling Monarch,” she told him, her eyes steely. “It was one of the first things I ever learned. I am not so poor a student.”

“You are in danger, your father is concerned that we should gain your shores without interference, without doubt as to your identity or right. Of course he gave it to me.”

“I do not and cannot believe you.”

“How do you suppose I came by it?” She looked at him, slowly, evaluating what she knew.

“I suppose you must have stolen it.”

“How? When exactly am I supposed to have accomplished that?” he replied scornfully.

She was still gazing at him, assessing him, remembering the order of events of the previous day. 

“I do not think you can have stolen it yourself. So you must have – instructed some one to take it for you. Anderssen. He was on the Arendellian with me.”

“He was in another part of the ship. You were the only person who entered your father’s cabin. How have I arranged all this?”

“I don’t know. I can only conjecture you arranged for it to be concealed somewhere Anderssen might obtain it.” Her eyes searched his face for some sign of confirmation, which he refused to give, while inwardly cursing himself for not hiding the damn seal better. “I know my father would never have given it up. Not if he were going to die.”

He shrugged. 

“It was given to me,” he asseverated. 

“You’ve admitted to me you aren’t very truthful, Hans.”

“So don’t believe me. When we see your father again, in four weeks’ time, ask him. That should settle the issue.”

The silence hung between them like a fog. 

He couldn’t believe the turn events had taken. Barely three minutes ago she had been attempting to seduce him, and now she looked more likely to make an attempt on his life. He was angry with the cabinet, he was angry with himself, and he was angry with Elsa; she had moved from eagerness itself to a statue of frozen refusal.

He seized hold of her arms and kissed her. It was not a good experience for either of them. Her lips held shut against his like a door, and he felt her rejection like a blow. This was Elsa, sweet, pliant Elsa whose unconditional surrender he had accepted nearly a fortnight ago, Elsa who flowered under his mouth like roses, Elsa who welcomed his touch with warmth that nobody else was granted – and now, suddenly, neither was he. He wanted to choke her. What was she thinking? Where had she to go? He was the same person he had been twenty minutes earlier, and he had denied everything. She had no reason at all to suspect what was true, and he strongly resented her acting on the strength of facts that, although in fact accurate, she had not proved. How was he to deal with that sort of indefatigable logic?

He dropped his hold on her arms, half shrugging, apologising although he did not feel sorry.

“I have inconvenienced you, Ma’am. Accept my apologies.”

“You have not inconvenienced me, Your Highness. You have betrayed my trust.” Her fists were clenched tight and her face white and narrow eyed with fury.

“I have not,” he returned. “You are perhaps too young to understand how your father might be expected to deal with me, you maybe don’t understand that between him and myself might be expected to subsist a confidence to which you, for _various reasons _would never be admitted. Your role will not be to rule, Elsa, because you cannot. Your royal destiny must be to bear children. Under these circumstances, of course he would entrust the Seal to me.” Her hands were rimed with curls and fronds of frost. He felt like a blackguard. He had never intended to hurt her. They were on the same side; he’d even been considering whether he preferred her company to that of the stables.__

__“He didn’t trust you!” she burst out._ _

__“Really?” he sneered. “How very distressing for you. You, of course, should not trust him, but that of course is another thing you aren’t privy to, because you are systematically excluded from all the decisions that shape your existence due to your _infirmity _.”___ _

____Her expression shattered into uncertainty, half belief and half fear._ _ _ _

____“I have no idea what you mean.” The frost was tangible in the air._ _ _ _

____“No, you have been most mercifully kept in ignorance. Your father sold you to my parents, to me, for either cure or for return in a coffin, to be managed as we best saw fit. Your parents sent you, with a price on your head, to possibly the most corrupt and mercenary family in the civilised nations. Your death was worth half a million crowns to my mother, and it is little short of a miracle that I contrived to get you out of the Southern Isles alive. You will notice that this was not wholly without cost._ _ _ _

____Why your esteemed father might have changed his mind enough to allow us safe passage and the Seal to confirm our identity, I can hardly say. Your superior knowledge of him might perhaps help you here, though your wilful ignorance might thwart your thinking as usual.” Her eyes were bright and tearfilled._ _ _ _

____“I don’t believe you,” she muttered without conviction. “You have no proof.”_ _ _ _

____“I have a bullet wound, of course; but you are correct in your surmise that I have not brought the contract with me. Doubtless there is a duplicate in the Arendelle archives, however. Its perusal will add to your extensive sources of pleasure in returning home.”_ _ _ _

____He wanted her back in his arms, he wanted to be the heart of her world again, he wanted her to continue to love him, and he had no way back. He had said the worst things he could, and he had done it to hurt her. He didn’t know what to do._ _ _ _

____So he went out on deck, because he didn’t care if he got so cold and wet that he gave himself a fever and died, and he didn’t care that she could not love him, or that she hated him, or that he had made it happen because he could apparently not sustain any relation without ruining it. And because out in a tempest of maritime rain, it was highly unlikely that anybody would realise that his face was wet for any other reason than that._ _ _ _


	10. A New Country

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the storm and its consequences

Activity, Hans was sure, would prove a useful solace to his hurt and confusion and consequent ill-temper, as once having reached the deck there was ample occupation for any and all. The sails needed reefs doubled and sea water washed over the decks as the little ship plunged and rocked and dived like a duck between walls of water that stood as high as she did herself. There was no time, in the wash of waves over the deck, the stinging spit of spray against him, the disorienting tilt of the ship, to brood on wrongs done him, or by him. Anderssen was captain, and Hans himself had only one good arm – even that was debatable, truly – but surely there must be some task he could be turned to.

Perhaps, he speculated savagely, that was why his father spent his time hunting; any interaction with women reduced one to a murderous rage that must have blood. She was infuriating, and he had had such high hopes of her. She had something he wanted and now he’d discovered she had it because she had offered it, she had withdrawn the offer. He completely understood why men did dreadful things to women after this little contretemps.

He limped towards the upper deck, momentarily diverted from the blinding rain of the storm by the consideration that he could have sat this one out; could, had he handled it better, have been enjoying the amorous attentions of his totty-headed princess, instead of being battered by a relentless tempest. He dredged up a death’s head grin from somewhere at the thought; he was his own worst enemy, really. What had he been thinking of, hiding that damn thing so casually? Then a wave swept over him as he attempted to grip the rail of the steps, that nearly knocked him sideways, and would have swept him off into the sea had he lost his hold, and he forgot all about it.

Any sense of time was likewise lost; between the cabin and the wheelhouse he could not say how long he had been trying to drag himself up there; he could see only the spray in his eyes and the grim determination in his mind.

Anderssen lost no time at all in disabusing him of his belief of usefulness. 

“Get back below!” he roared at the sight of him. Hans obstinately shook his head.

“Think I’ve time to knock you out and carry you? Get down below immediately!”

And Anderssen collared some wretched ragged bilge rat, directing him to conduct Hans safely back to the cabin. 

Hans went, mainly because the overexertion of just the progress from the cabin to the wheel when his wound was so little healed had left him shattered, and he had lost his delusion that he could do anything on deck except possibly die, and some part of him still resisted that.

The bilge rat – a skinny, dark little creature of whipcord muscle and evil aspect due to a slight cast in one eye, proved ridiculously strong for his size, taking half Hans’ weight as he hauled him down the steps, and half carried him across the sluice to the cabin door. He was barefoot, which must be helpful. At the door, he also held out a flask of something heartening, which Hans took with unfeigned gratitude and drank a snifter from, nodding his thanks.

“Name?” The soaked monkey boy stared at him.

“It’s grog.”  
“Yours, bilge rat,” Hans smiled.

“Eh? Silas.” And with an openly mistrustful stare, Silas wiped off the neck of the flask, took a drink himself and was on his way.

Hans staggered into the cabin with barely a thought of Elsa. He was too ill to care what horrors must follow; it was possible she would split the ship with a little tantrum of ice power, freezing the water in the wood, and he was too weak to fight her. Whatever progress he had made in recovery from the bullet wound, he had lost with the exhaustion of going out on deck after two scenes in the space of a single day, which he had found deeply disturbing, both to his plans and to his serenity of soul.

The unexpected sequel was that Elsa was neither crouched in the bunk preparing with wide-eyed terror for a salty grave, nor freezing her entire surroundings with a wave of impulsive ice magic. She was walking up and down the cabin in a contained fury of thought, and when he wedged the warped door shut behind him and closed his eyes against the onslaught that must follow he was surprised to find no sound except the rustle of her petticoats, and to feel her arm taking his and helping him back to the bunk.

“I have been remiss,” she said quietly. “You are too ill for this now. I should not have let you go outside.” And her arms supported him across the few remaining steps to merciful rest and helped him to find it. He supposed, dimly, that at least she did not desire him dead, which was as much as he could find to be glad of. Her hands undressed him and he permitted it, although he could not like it. It was deeply improper, and given their current state of understanding, he would infinitely have preferred to have the bilge rat than his wife. He had not the energy to combat her.

As she undressed him and wrapped him up in who knew what – linen, perhaps; maybe to serve as a winding sheet if he did resign his hold on life – and tucked her fur cloak around him again, she explained the direction of her thoughts; she had reflected that he might have done something unprincipled – had he had the energy, he would have smiled at that singular “something” – but it was not proven, and she should give him the benefit of the doubt until her father had given his account. She should have perhaps have accepted that he was unlikely to call her father as a witness if he was deceiving her. Again, Hans would have smiled if he could. It was sweet that he would still, apparently, be able to surprise her for years to come. 

She understood – by this time she had completed his undress and wrapping up, and begun to arrange his pillows – she understood that whatever his faults, he had put his life at risk to preserve hers, she too had heard of the threat to her life from without the Southern Isles, and perhaps, from what he had told her, there had been others. She acknowledged that he had been shot in the attempt to save herself, and that that gave him claims on her care without any consideration of her connection to him.

And finally, (her hands were folded in her lap now, as she watched him lying stone still and sick white) she continued on to her reflection on her marriage vows, in which she had promised to love and cherish him, and to be his partner in what he did, and to help him when he needed her, and she told him she must keep her temper even if he did turn out to be morally dubious, and certainly when she had no definite proof.

She seemed to have been talking in her low, gentle tones forever. She must have done an awful lot of thinking, Hans thought, in the time he had taken to get across the deck and back. It could be a sorcery thing, where time moved differently for her because of her powers. He was drifting away into the storm, where it was all quite logical for time to move at any pace and with any loss of coherence. It was for the best.

 

By the time he woke, they had ridden out the storm. The movement of the ship was lulling, gentle, and he was hot and damp with sweat. He threw the fur off with some effort, and was soon shivering and reaching for it again. They were out of danger, but he was unconvinced that he was. He turned his head back to the flattened pillow and shut his eyes.

 

The next time he woke it was as light in the cabin as it was likely ever to become, and Elsa had a draught of some sort of drink at his lips, which she was determined on pouring either down his throat or over it. It seemed horribly unfair that in a storm, where most things are lost or spoiled, Elsa’s grimly acidulous lemonade had survived. 

“Is it poisoned?” he grimaced ungratefully after swallowing half a mugful of it.

Elsa looked reproachfully at him. She seemed to consider his remark in poor taste. She shook her head a little, and then a thought twisted the corner of her mouth impishly.

“No, it is full of things that are good for you. Nearly the same thing.”

He closed his eyes again. He should apologise to her, but he wanted nothing to do with anybody’s sensibilities for the moment. 

“Where are we?” he asked, his eyes remaining shut. 

“In Arendellian waters; we have made port in a tiny village a good way short of Kristiansborg,” she replied. “We must send to Anna for either another ship or for supplies to re-fit this one; the damage from the storm is substantial.”

And then she was talking rationally, sensibly, almost manfully, about the repairs required, the time they would take, whether they should sail or send for a carriage to take them to the capital.

“I thought you wished to await your father?”

“That was your suggestion, but I am afraid after that storm, of delays to his vessel for the same reason as there were to ours.” His eyes snapped open to examine her countenance; she was under-reporting her fear. She might thank him yet that he had taken that seal. “I am of the opinion that we should make all haste to Arendelle itself. I further suggest we sail, rather than go overland, though I will be swayed by your greater knowledge and that of the Captain. If the autumn storms are likely to continue so violent, perhaps overland would be better. But your convalescence, should we be able to sail on without storms, would surely be more comfortable on board ship.”

Once again, she appeared to have thought a good deal in a short time, and he felt some relief. She had risen to the occasion impressively, obtaining a full report of the damage of the ship, assessing the options and making a sensible plan to solve their problems. 

“Will you cast your eye over what I have written?”

My Dear Sister

I am nearer by this than the Southern Isles – am now in the state of Arendelle,   
but stranded by the storms that have damaged our little boat extensively.

I beg your immediate assistance, dearest; our ship can make no more progress,   
and our money cannot grow trees or rope or sailcloth with requisite speed. I   
implore you convey the items on the attached inventory with all speed. 

I do not know what you heard of our exit from the Southern Isles; it was over-  
hasty, and accompanied with some peril, but I was protected from all by my   
gallant husband, who is by my side as I write.

I ask your assistance again, with all the diligence at your disposal; we wait   
upon your help to make any further progress toward true safety.

I long to see you again Anna.

With all my heart

Elsa

 

“We will seal it with the Royal Seal, of course, though I do not doubt Anna will recognise my handwriting.” Hans raised an eyebrow at her.

“The Royal Seal?”

“I have already apologised,” she replied gently. She pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead. “Do you approve what I have written?”

“You have thought of everything,” he replied. He liked her hand on his forehead, and that annoyed him. He didn’t know how to behave, because now that he seemed so dependent on her, his main wish was to push her away with the most utter obnoxiousness of which he was capable.

“You wish to sleep,” she said, and tucked the furs around him anew before passing from the cabin.

He certainly did wish to sleep, but he wanted to be up and doing more. There appeared to be no choice, though; he had already put back his progress by the foolish venture out into the storm, and now both need and common sense suggested he take full advantage of the lull in events to gather his resources. He slept.


	11. Arendelle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hans sees his new home and meets more of his new family

They made port in Arendelle six days later; the Princess had sent three ships from the Arendellian navy; one remained behind to repair and escort the Goldwing, while the others brought her sister and her husband back to the capital.

Hans’ first impression of the city was that it was badly in need of modernisation; the streets looked clean but narrow; the houses were tall and thin, with tall thin windows and steeply angled roofs; close-packed at the harbourside, they pottered off up the hillside like an extended village rather than a proper capital city. As the castle itself was built directly onto the waterfront, at some distance from the town, it was difficult to gain a true knowledge of the state of affairs, but it looked like a preposterous country cousin of urbanity to a metropolitan like Hans. 

Still suffering the exhaustion of his wound, his first feeling on beholding his new homeland was profoundly negative. The Southern Isles had a palace of a thousand windows, elegantly pillared, modern, airy, spacious, designed in the new classical style that had swept Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. 

Arendelle was still stuck firmly in the Gothic past. He had never seen so much gunmetal grey stone and gloomily dark wood in his life. The place looked like it would have the heads of dead animals on the walls of lofty halls and huge draughty rooms, where his home had charmingly appointed salons, crystal chandeliers and French windows. He thanked God the state was rich; the whole place was due for an extensive overhaul; he was not living anywhere that so strongly resembled an enlarged version of his father’s hunting lodge without improving it in every aspect at the earliest opportunity. If Elsa allowed him.

Elsa did not suffer at all, she was thrilled and excited to return to her home and her sister, and did not seem to make any comparison with the refinement and opulence she might have been expected to become accustomed to, but she was considerate enough to show some care for him, which actually made him feel still more irritable. He had a repetitive sentence beating a tattoo in his brain and it made him withdraw from her into his own morose, introspective world; she’s going to find out, she’s going to find out. And when she did find out, the sky was going to fall on his head, unless he had an exceptionally good story, or a small miracle. 

The combination of his injury and her suspicion had brought out a side of Elsa he had not been aware existed. She was efficient, organising, regal. She had promised that she would take care of him, and she had promised that she would reserve judgement, and she had kept her word. She had tended his wound and looked to his comfort with exemplary gentleness; he had grown accustomed to her ungloved hand checking his temperature at intervals; her patient assessment, cleaning and re-dressing of his wound; her patient determination to make him eat; but she had remained a little reserved. She was waiting for her father’s confirmation that he was not a thief, before she admitted him back into her confidence. 

Hans was wretched – not because her father would surely reveal his dishonesty, for he reckoned Agdar as open to blackmail, after his behaviour to Elsa, as a kitchen door would be to the garden on a July afternoon – but because he missed her. He was startled by it. He wanted her back at his side, adoring, soft, easily directed. He wanted from her what you cannot get from someone except by their own volition; he had, without much interest in doing so, somehow succeeded in making her fall in love with him, and now apparently this meant he had struck a bargain where he had to conform to what Elsa designated good. And being nobody’s fool, he was horribly aware that this was beyond possibility. The best he could hope for was not to get caught, which was going to take a quantity of meticulous planning and possibly more bad behaviour than was necessary, to cover his tracks.

And this was apparently what he must do, because, he supposed, he had fallen in – something; desire, habit, enjoyment of her company - pray not love - with her himself. She was completely soft in the upper storey, but he was worse; he was a fool.

 

Her arm was his support as they disembarked, until a small bundle of green-garbed nature hurled herself into Elsa, embracing her fiercely, slightly desperately, rather as if she must make contact before Elsa’s more sedate nature reminded her of propriety. As it was, Elsa kept hold of Hans even while she hugged the green figure gently to her, and then stroked her hair, indicating in this mild way that they might now draw a little apart. The tiny elfin figure did not relinquish her hold, however.

“Anna, you are overwhelming! Calm yourself and let me see you.” The two sisters examined each other, perhaps for signs of change, perhaps just for the sheer pleasure of being in one another’s company again, because Anna soon cut the looking short with another, irresistible hug.

“I have missed you like – oh, like I would miss cake and chocolate and all the good things to eat in the world if I had to live off elk stew for two years! I am so glad you are back!” 

Elsa smiled, and stroked Anna’s hair again, and told her she was glad to have returned, and had missed her, too, and introduced Hans.

To his mixed horror, physical discomfort and sneaking enjoyment, he too came in for a share of Anna’s happiness, in the form of an affectionate hug. She was talking into his ear as she embraced his shoulders – 

“My new brother! I’m so pleased! I have had not even a sister since too long by half, and now I have a sister and a brother! Goodness me,” she added guilelessly, drawing back and taking a look at him, “you are fearfully good looking. Are you all handsome, you Southern Isles boys? Because your brother’s a decidedly superior specimen, too, though he’s a little – “ Anna frowned, searching for a word – “overcome, I think.”

“My brother is here?” enquired Hans, also a little overcome by the rapid-fire chatter that was Anna’s customary style of address. 

“Oh yes indeed. Three days since. He must have missed the storm, which accounts for how he got here before you –“

“Anna – which brother? It’s important,” said Elsa. Anna took the seriousness in Elsa’s tone and became serious as well.

“Prince Adolphus,” she replied. Hans sagged with relief, and Elsa rubbed his arm, comfortingly.

“We can deal with him,” she murmured. 

“Hm. Well, maybe, but he kept saying he shot you –“ here Anna nodded at Hans – “so he is in his chambers with an escort. He keeps crying; I think he may be mad.” She delivered herself of this verdict in a breezy, rather heartless way that nearly made Hans laugh. It was completely in keeping with her fifteen-year-old tactlessness and disarming candour, but somewhat surprising in its thrust; it suggested she had little or no idea of how her sister was represented in the world beyond her own country.

“I would very much like to see him,” he said.

“Did he shoot you?” asked Anna, whose forthrightness knew no boundaries.

“Yes. But I have chosen to consider it an accident.”

“It’s what he claimed,” explained Elsa, frowning a little. “And he did find us a doctor, so I suppose we must believe him, although I was very angry with him at the time.”

“What wonderful adventures you have been having!” declared Anna with frank envy. “Not you, of course – you’ve been shot. But Elsa’s had all the fun with none of the damage. You must be his lucky charm!” She smacked a kiss onto Elsa’s cheek and began bundling them inside, which Hans felt could not happen too quickly.

 

A rather more dull greeting was theirs in the main hall, where Pastor Nylund was pleased to meet them. He was a distant, asetic looking man; tall and starved looking in his black robes, like a crow that existed to tell children that chocolate eggs at Easter were Godless and forbidden. Elsa curtsied so low in front of them that Hans wondered if she was actually going to kneel. The Pastor laid his hand on her head and blessed her, before she stood before him.

“Welcome home, my child,” he intoned over her.

“Thank you, Pastor.”

“I hope you have kept yourself pure among the temptations of a Royal Court far from your homeland, where not all is as Christ wills.” Hans glowered at him behind his bland expression. Rude, underbred little man, he thought. I do not make mock of this antiquated little place and your ridiculous ruff. 

“I – I have done my utmost, Pastor.” And now the power-hungry creature was making Elsa feel guilty. Hans smiled a wide, vacuous smile.

“Prince Hans, Southern Isles and all that. Elsa’s husband. How de do. Must be off upstairs, bit of repairing to do.” And he led her off.

“Hans!” she reproached him, as they ascended the staircase.

“What? Dismal chap, just been rude about my homeland to my face.”

“But he is God’s representative.”

“God hasn’t told you that himself, has He?” Elsa looked uncertain of how to respond, hesitated, fatally. “No, a weird organisation of dodgy men in black dresses has told you. I find that – less than definitive, myself. He knows about you, doesn’t he?” Elsa bowed her head in confirmation. “Has he ever said a kind word to you about it?” Elsa’s little head was still. “No. God’s representatives hate little girls with powers. Ever occurred to you that they may know just as little about what Christ wants as you do?”

Elsa shook her head. 

“What you are saying is – is blasphemous.”

“No, that would be going against the teachings of Christ. I just think there is just as much dishonesty among the clergy as among other people. And, my little ‘I have done my utmost’ Princess, you don’t entirely believe him either.” Elsa ducked his eyes, turning to the door they had reached.

“These are the chambers Anna has had prepared for you.” He took her hand.

“What hours do you keep here?” Her face clouded with uncertainty.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been here for so long. I will ask Anna and send to you. When will you see Dolph?”

“A couple of hours. When I have rested.” He kissed her hand, and turned inside.

It was a reasonable size room, rather sparely furnished, but with an ample fire in the fireplace and a chimney that occupied half the wall, promising some competition to the draughts. He selected a book from the shelf, lay himself down on the sofa, and began to read, or rather to look over the book as he thought, and was soon engrossed in his reflections.

 

He was roused neither by a servant, nor his wife, but by Dolph.

“Good heavens, you here already?” he murmured, wondering even as the words left his lips what he meant. “I wasn’t expecting you – without notice, I mean. This place seems antediluvian in its notions of etiquette.” He sat up, taking in his brother’s appearance for the first time. “What’s the matter with you? You look worse than I do.”

“I think I have made an awful mull of things, Hanschen, and I fear it will involve you.”

“No doubt, Adolphus, we have all made awful mulls of things, and all too many of the mulls of the world seem to involve me. But we recover. You look shocking.”

“I left Helena and Angelika, behind at home - before I thought – now I’m afraid I’ve endangered them. And you – it may already be that you’re in danger.”

“No, no, Dolph, my little Dresden figure wife has proved a most excellent nurse, and I am probably near to being out of danger by now. What do you talk of? You must go back and explain yourself properly. Indeed, I still suffer some curiosity as to how exactly I came to be the target of your pistol.”

Dolph sat down beside him, pushing his hands into his hair so it stuck out at the sides like a scarecrow, always an indication of severe distress in his case. If Anna had seen him doing that, it was small wonder she thought he had lost his reason.

“I shot at you because I had been briefed of the threat to Elsa, and seeing you – I mistook your identity, though I recognised your wife, even in breeches.” Hans grinned.

“Dresses down nicely, doesn’t she?” Dolph managed a weak smile. 

“She’s got character, I grant you. Can you picture Helena making a midnight escape wearing breeches?” Hans resisted the impulse to say that Helena had no need of a midnight escape to wear the breeches in her relationship with his brother, but decided against it, merely smiling his agreement. “So I shot you, supposing that Elsa had somehow been inveigled into trusting somebody – from here, I assumed – and that he was kidnapping her with her own assistance, as it were.”

There was a pause.

“I’m truly sorry, Hanschen. I never meant to, and I have been – I was so afraid I’d killed you.”

“But fortunately you hadn’t, and here I am. Go on with the strange tale of how you come to be here.”

“Mother told me that in fact, Elsa is a danger to you – she has some disease, though whether of the mind or the body I couldn’t make out – and she says that you can count on her to recover you. You should look for Torsten in the next few days, and I do not think he will come alone or unarmed.”

“And you are here as – a warning, or to help him from the inside?” Hans’ eyes on his brother’s were steady, as he searched his countenance for a flinch or a shadow – a second of hesitation that might betray him. There was not a flicker in Dolph’s expression.

“I’m here to warn you. Because I don’t believe Elsa is a danger to anybody. How can she be? It makes no sense at all. And because I had to see with my own eyes that you are recovering; I feared for you. I would never have been able to forgive myself, had I harmed you.”

On the balance of probabilities, Hans believed him. Dolph had long been one of his preferred brothers, and he had never known him deliberately harm others. A bureaucrat governed by his rather mean-spirited wife, he was, but a fratricide, he could not be made by any stretch of credulity.

“I’m touched, Dolph. But you are ill-informed; I think I should apprise you of the facts before we make a plan.”

And so, for an hour or so, Hans talked to Dolph of Elsa, of Elsa’s powers, of the contract, and her parents, and of his next steps, in which he was inclined to believe Torsten would, in fact, assist.


	12. Overheard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations about God, Love and Chocolate.

By the end of their discussion, Dolph's expression was one of concern. It was a tangle, and he knew as well as Hans the little dependence that could be placed on their mother’s disinterest.

“And Elsa takes it all on, piece by piece, everything to nurture her self-blame and her fear. We’d hardly got past her parents and then I told her about the contract, and now there’s that Nylund, who looks as amusing as a wet weekend in the lower Volta.” Hans answered Dolph’s look of enquiry with a shrugged, “Some cadaverous Religious. With a ruff.”

Dolph smiled at Hans’ indignation; only one so intensely concerned with surfaces as he could deliver a judgement of utter damnation on a clergyman on account of neckwear. Hans had caught the look. “I’d overlook it if he weren’t such a mean spirited creature. He told Elsa off for – well, for suspicion of poor behaviour because she’d spent eighteen months at court somewhere a trifle less out of the way than Arendelle. And she accepted it.” Dolph was smirking, though Hans couldn’t imagine why.

"It's terribly touching, how protective you are of the _petite insensee _.”__

__Hans gave him a startled look. Then shrugged._ _

__“I can’t think about it properly. Too many distractions surround me.”_ _

__“It’s not about thinking, Hanschen. I suppose one can only judge by your current level of eagerness to take the cloth. It seems reduced.”_ _

__Hans shook his head reproachfully at Dolph, but he had the grace to blush._ _

__“It is difficult to credit I take such pleasure in the company of my attacker,” he complained._ _

__“I don’t know how we’ll manage when I have to leave you here alone.” _With my standoffish bride. _Hans could almost have shuddered at the prospect, but as he had several ideas of how to turn Elsa’s thoughts back to him – with a more favourable sentiment – he forebore, and instead put himself to the trouble of sending out for chocolates for her.___ _

____Finding this did not occupy the whole time until dinner, he repaired to the library, where he completed sundry items of urgent correspondence, and then started to read the newspaper and made such excellent headway that after the first page the desire to stretch himself upon one of the sofas behind the Chinese screen was of more importance than further reading._ _ _ _

____His progress in sleeping was likewise excellent, until he realized he had been awoken by soft voices, from the other side of the screen, and that the voices were those of his wife and sister in law._ _ _ _

____It was a ticklish situation, since drawing attention to himself would suggest he had heard all that had happened so far; so – aware that it was beneath him to eavesdrop, and that Elsa would probably never speak to him again if she discovered him – he remained quiet and concealed, and overheard. Elsa was taking a rather stern tone with the sister she had been so happy to be reunited with._ _ _ _

____“Anna, this is not like you and your desperate passion for petits fours.”_ _ _ _

____“That was when I was a mere child,” came the voice of the younger princess. “I have scarcely touched a sweet cake in – “ the voice faltered – “I‘m much better than I was used to be. I hardly ever steal them any more.” What sounded suspiciously like a snort came from Elsa._ _ _ _

____“You are grown too large to sneak into the kitchens under the table.”_ _ _ _

____“Don’t sneer, Elsa, it’s highly unbecoming. Mama says so.” Elsa sighed._ _ _ _

____“I’m sorry, Anna. I did not mean to sneer. However, I maintain my position about Hans. I cannot wholly trust him.”_ _ _ _

____“But you have had to trust him, and he has yet to play you false. He has saved your life, Elsa. That must count for something.” Yes, Hans thought, finding himself in complete agreement with the wise small sister. It really should._ _ _ _

____“Yes – it does, of course. I don’t know; I don’t understand my own feelings.”_ _ _ _

____“Neither do I, when you don’t explain them,” sighed Anna._ _ _ _

____“I – have become very close to him.” Not close enough, he reflected ruefully._ _ _ _

____“That is entirely as it should be. He is your husband. And we are lucky to marry where we even like, even a little; Papa says there are so many things to think of in a Royal Marriage, that we cannot hope for more.”_ _ _ _

____“Too close, Anna.” Elsa spoke slowly with great emphasis, sounding depressingly like she regretted this proximity. Anna considered Elsa's meaning. Then -_ _ _ _

____“What - ?” Anna gasped. “You mean you – ?“_ _ _ _

____“No – but we were in a very compromising position and I am not sure what might – I tried to seduce him, Anna. On the Goldwing.”_ _ _ _

____“Tried? Was he – too gentlemanly - ?”_ _ _ _

____“No – I changed my mind – circumstances changed – “_ _ _ _

____“What circumstances changed? Did you fall out of the bunk?” Hans nearly guffawed, stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth in time. Elsa’s laugh did ring out, clear and unembarrassed._ _ _ _

____“Near enough. The Royal Seal of Arendelle fell out of a cabinet at that exact moment, and I am absolutely certain he must have stolen it. Papa would never have let him take it. Especially because Papa did not like him. He called him smooth and sharp, and warned me to be on my guard.”_ _ _ _

____“Well, that is simply too bad of Papa!” declared Anna with rebellious anger. “He married you to him, and he sent you off to be with him, and then he can’t try to like him! No, Elsa, that is unfair of Papa!” There was a thoughtful pause, before Anna added, “I do not think he is always right, Elsa; he took you away from me, and I have had to have the most disagreeable ‘friends’ like that Silke Thygessen, and she may seem like a lady, but she is such a troll on the inside she should have to live under a bridge! When I shared my chocolates with her she went running off to Pastor Nylund; and I wasn’t allowed any more for a month! She is a mean wretch and a sneak!”_ _ _ _

____“Why would you be in trouble for having chocolates? Did you steal them? Anna?”_ _ _ _

____“Only in a manner of speaking.” There was a pause. Hans could picture Elsa’s meaningful stare and felt an overwhelming desire to laugh again. “They were a gift. I opened them in error.”_ _ _ _

____“Oh, Anna.”_ _ _ _

____“Very well, but they were franked with a Royal Frank, and everybody knows it’s against the law to open the Royal Mail except that this was super-particularly Royal because it was from the Southern Royal family to our Royal family, and I am as Royal and from the family as anybody reasonably could be.” Anna’s voice changed to something a shade more ashamed. “And they had a “By Appointment” crest on the packaging and the name was Hjarlsfodd Chocolatiers, so I guessed – well, hoped - it was for me. That’s all.”_ _ _ _

____“Hm. So you stole Mama’s chocolates, and you ended up in trouble. That seems almost fair.”_ _ _ _

____“It was not at all fair! For one thing, I shared them with Silke, and for another it wasn’t Mama she went to, it was the Pastor. And he is the most odious man, so obviously he had to declaim for some time about my gluttony as well as my dishonesty, and I have to say, that if it had been you, you would never have betrayed me like that, and if Papa hadn’t sent you away, we could all have been comfortable and happy together.”_ _ _ _

____Some strange sounds succeeded; a muffled scrunching of soft silk, a sigh that was almost a sob, and a satisfied little huff, from which Hans deduced that Anna had gleaned another hug, with which she was very well pleased, while Elsa continued guilty._ _ _ _

____“Anna, we couldn’t be comfortable before because I was locked in my room. Because – of things you don’t remember.”_ _ _ _

____“I remember everything!” responded Anna indignantly. “I am the best rememberer!”_ _ _ _

____“You don’t remember this because you can’t. When we were playing – when we were little – and I made you fall and you had to – we had to take you to the trolls in the valley. And they were very nice to you, Anna, you shouldn’t say that ill-mannered or vicious people are like trolls on the inside.”_ _ _ _

____“If they are so nice, why did they steal my memories?”_ _ _ _

____“To protect you. Perchance to protect me, too. I told you, it was my fault.” Mutinous silence from Anna for a short moment._ _ _ _

____“I don’t believe you. You have always been kind to me. Tilly Nordestrom said her older sister used to strike her over the head with her stuffed bear, but you never did such things. You even shared your shortcake.” Once again, the conversation seemed to have been sidetracked by Anna’s near-obsession with sweetmeats. Hans could only imagine what massive girth might be hers in later years if she did not restrain her passion for such stuff._ _ _ _

____“It was an accident, but I was responsible.”_ _ _ _

____“Well then. I forgive you, and now all is right – and Elsa, it would have been right so many years ago! I will always forgive you!” This style of reassurance, which Hans found over-effusive, Elsa seemed to welcome with surprised pleasure. There was a pause he conjectured was filled with another embrace._ _ _ _

____“You forgive what you don’t know, though, Anna.”_ _ _ _

____“There is more than trolls and memory theft?”_ _ _ _

____“Indeed there is. I have – watch.” Hans could feel very little cold in his part of the room, which indicated how much greater Elsa’s control had become. Her confidence had grown with her practice, of course, and whatever she showed Anna was apparently enchanting._ _ _ _

____“Elsa! You just – made that – ow! Elsa, it is ice!”_ _ _ _

____“When we were little we used to play in the snow all the time, Anna. I used to make it snow for you, and we ice-skated in the ballroom, and made snow figures and hills and went down them on tea trays. You used to wear your fur boots into the ballroom. But I mis-aimed a bolt of snow and it hit you. It was so terrifying, Anna; I thought you were going to die, and so did Papa, and he was so extremely cross with me – and the ride out to the Trolls was awful. I swore to myself on that ride that if God let you live I would never do anything to harm you ever again.”_ _ _ _

____“That was – when you locked your door, then,” replied Anna, slowly. She reflected. “Well, you broke that vow the moment you turned the key, Elsa. Because it has harmed me, all the time, that I thought you didn’t love me any more. That I had to be friends with those other girls, because you wouldn’t be my friend, and that you didn’t trust me with your secret still hurts me now.”_ _ _ _

____“Forgive me, then. Because you said you would always forgive me. And I meant it for the best, and Papa meant it for the best.”_ _ _ _

____“I do forgive you, but you must not be so silly again. And I shall be having a good word with Papa when he gets back,” added Anna sternly. “I shall be explaining about what might be for the best.”_ _ _ _

____Again Hans rejoiced in Anna’s common sense. She seemed to have a good deal more than Elsa, who was too sensitive to slights and reproaches to allow it to direct her; though Anna had suffered much less reproach than Elsa, if her determination to correct her parents might be an indication._ _ _ _

____He was hopeful to hear more of their odd mismatched talk – Elsa so proper and frightened, and Anna so robustly fond of her sister and of fun - but the dressing bell rang for dinner, so the young ladies hurried away to their rooms to dress, and he heard no more of what was never intended for him._ _ _ _

____ _ _

____Pastor Nylund’s presence at the dinner table was no great addition, to Hans’ mind. He seemed to cast a blight of disapproval over the whole proceeding, with an air so sour it seemed sheer good fortune that the sauces weren’t curdled, though Hans felt it not unlikely he might affect the party’s digestion._ _ _ _

____After a lugubrious blessing on the food, the Pastor ate slowly and with ascetic revulsion, picking his food apart and forking up tiny mouthfuls, while Anna stuffed in various meats, pushing her way through food with blissful rapidity and surprising tidiness. Much of her quickness seemed to be related to her inability to desist, even briefly, from participation in conversation._ _ _ _

____“So, tell me all about the Southern Isles court. Is it really a sort of modern Gomorrah? Because Papa and Mama were always very concerned that Elsa would fall into bad habits, but they would not confide exactly what they might be, which obviously has made me mad to know.”_ _ _ _

____“I feel sure you would be disappointed, cousin. Necklines are a shade lower, jewels a thought more ostentatious, scandals more eagerly canvassed – but really – it is not the ancien regime, nor yet the formality of St Petersburg. It is a home for a large family,” Hans told her, opting for tactful understatement._ _ _ _

____“There is a lot more society than I have seen here. It is unusual for the palace not to have people to dinner. The place is swarming with foreign dignitaries and cultural attaches,” Dolph said mildly._ _ _ _

____“Oh – do you have concerts? We haven’t had any for – oh, forever! And I love music!” Elsa mentioned the pianist who had visited the previous month. “Oh, was he wonderful? I would so love him to visit here! Do you have such visitors often?”_ _ _ _

____“Dolph spends much of his time encouraging them. We should make him write some letters while we have him at our disposal.”_ _ _ _

____“That would be so splendid! And the opera? We have no opera; although we have an excellent gallery.”_ _ _ _

____“Too many of the recreations of your court have the reputation of being corrupt. Such as gambling," interjected Pastor Nylund. Hans observed that Elsa had blushed a fetching shade of pink. She was as still as a hunted animal for a moment, listening for the hunter._ _ _ _

____“What is it about gambling you object to? Is it the money, or the games of chance themselves?”_ _ _ _

____“Both are dishonourable in the eyes of our Lord.” Elsa had collected herself and was cutting up her food with the most precisely tiny movements she could frame._ _ _ _

____“My scripture must be deplorably rusty; I don’t recall Christ teaching anything on this subject at all. Much about polite sharing of dinner and tolerating others, but nothing at all about the recreational use of luck or mathematical probability. Do refresh my memory.”_ _ _ _

____“Timothy warns that the love of money is a sin that leads to many evils, and Ecclesiastes that it will erode all other moral rulings.”_ _ _ _

____“Ah, the Old Testament. Which also says that ‘the lot is cast into the lap; but every decision is from the Lord’. So since God makes the decisions in matters of chance, this must be a matter of indifference to him. He simply doesn’t like gamblers – who are gambling to make money. So those who are indifferent to their winnings or who gamble to lose do not incur His wrath.” Hans kept his eyes on Pastor Nylund's face, not wanting to further discompose Elsa. The Pastor looked all disbelief._ _ _ _

____“But who has seen such behaviour?” he exclaimed._ _ _ _

____“I have. But I have lived very much in the world, I am afraid.” And with this faux-humble riposte, Hans smiled sweetly at the Pastor, and flicked a rapid glance at Elsa, who could not catch his eye at all._ _ _ _

____After dinner was ended, and Hans had had to tolerate still more of the Pastor’s repressive company over brandy, he discovered that there was to be no respite; apparently the Religious was in the habit of reading aloud to the family in their hours of leisure before retiring for the night. Offered volumes of poetry, or stories, he declined, declaring that the passages of the Bible he had selected for that night were particularly pertinent in light of recent events._ _ _ _

____There could be no happy choice of Biblical reading in Hans’ view. One had to tolerate an hour or two of religious instruction or sometimes more on Sundays, and one was expected to pray as a matter of form before eating and sleeping; subjecting the family to compulsory Bible reading in the evening was going too far._ _ _ _

____Dolph, keeping his delight controlled only with considerable effort, was applauding the Pastor’s choice of employment, and going to some lengths to iterate his happiness to know Hans would be so well provided for, spiritually, so easily able to access guidance, when he himself was obliged to return to the horrors of the worldly court that was his own home._ _ _ _

____Anna was goggling at him in a way that suggested she might comment, were she not so strongly struggling against astonishment._ _ _ _

____Hans drily extended an invitation for him to stay as long as he might wish._ _ _ _

____“Ah, Hanschen, if I only could!” returned Dolph without the smallest push to dissimulate his glee._ _ _ _

____Hardly had Pastor Nylund taken up the Good Book, however, than they were luckily distracted; the chocolates he had sent into town to find had been delivered._ _ _ _

____Anna’s excitement was expressed through a squeal so shrill Hans was pleased she was seated next to the Pastor and not himself. It was followed by a thrilled glissando of no fixed vowel sound, ending in a kind of low maternal coo, accompanied by a flurry of movement to gain Elsa’s side, an expression of adoring trustfulness on her face as she alternately watched her sister’s face, and the chocolates._ _ _ _

____“Ooh,” Elsa echoed. Hans once again wondered at the power of sweetened food to reduce her to a puddle of breathless mindlessness. Both girls engaged in the unwrapping of the gift; gold tissue reflected light onto their faces so they seemed illuminated by the very prospect of chocolate._ _ _ _

____The box was a shallow square, with a diamond of chocolates arranged in four quarters. One quarter was dark chocolates, opposite a quarter of a lighter colour; one was actually pink, and the last one – struck Elsa silent, hand at her mouth with shock, and naturally had quite the opposite effect on Anna._ _ _ _

____“Oh – they are – oh, Elsa! We had better hide them – there will be such terrible trouble when MamaPapa get back! Or no, we will just eat them all – how many are there?”_ _ _ _

____Hans had trouble keeping his countenance. He had not specified the chocolates, but he could plainly see what was causing the embarrassment; the chocolatier had included as his final selection capezzoli di Venere._ _ _ _

____He had vaguely believed his own upbringing to have been quite straitlaced – certainly it had been mainly populated by tales to prevent innumerable sorts of ill behaviour, to none of which he had bothered to pay the slightest attention – but when he compared it to that of the Arendellian royals, the propriety expected of him was a candle to an incandescent sun. The princesses had obviously been trained to a degree of repression where had he been told they were obliged to undress and bathe in pitch darkness, to prevent the possibility of anybody, even themselves, beholding their naked forms, he would have believed it._ _ _ _

____Pastor Nylund seeing the chocolates, Elsa having been too overcome to conceal them quickly enough, put an end to all peace._ _ _ _

____“Are you responsible for gifting your wife with those lewd and profane insults to morality, young man?” enquired the Pastor._ _ _ _

____“Sir, I cannot credit chocolates with the power to experience sensations of lust. They are not lewd,” countered Hans, discovering he was at the end of his patience. “They are only chocolate. ”_ _ _ _

____“Their design is to provoke unworthy feelings of the lowest kind in men’s breasts.” What a very unfortunate choice of words, he thought, as Anna went off into some kind of conniption caused by her attempt to choke her laughter._ _ _ _

____“You must take some comfort, then, that they are only for the ladies. I can hardly suppose _them _likely to find the form provocative of lust. Your Highnesses, may I suggest that your long separation might excuse an early retirement to your rooms, should you wish to converse privately.” _Either with one another, or with the chocolates _he added silently._____ _ _ _

________And with a dark and angry feeling toward the ridiculous Pastor, he opened the door to show them out. Elsa just heard the beginning of Hans’ exasperated remonstration as she and Anna found the staircase._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Deeply as I respect your religious learning, sir, I must insist that you refrain from the visitation of reproach on my wife. Eating chocolate in any sort at all is not a sin sufficiently egregious to merit this level of opprobrium.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“You must remain unaware of her Highness’s affliction, then. She, more than any one else, must be held – and taught to hold herself – to the highest possible standard. She is _marked _, your Highness, and I believe only constant moral supervision can save her from the dreadful fate in the afterlife that her problem signals.”___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“I see. I thank you for your concern and your intercession with her.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Their conversation continued a short while in polite nothings, for both recognized they were unlikely to share a view on the Princess, and Hans found he was beginning to take animadversions on her powers all too much to heart._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________By mutual consent the party broke up and left for their own rooms shortly after, at about the same time as a bedraggled, resentful-looking white pigeon flapped fussily into its cote on the roof of the Western Tower._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	13. Augusta Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Series of Unfortunate News Items

Hans did not give much thought to his rank – he was, after all, the last in a long line of hale and hearty princes, and he would always be a somewhat disposable scion of an illustrious house; indeed, the births of the last five princes had been a succession of disappointments to his father, who had apparently longed for a daughter. By the time of Hans’ arrival, all Augusta was longing for was a year off from expecting a new baby; a longing she pursued with all the considerable determination of her character, to such good effect that she had now achieved almost two decades, and could reasonably hope to continue her winning streak to the end of her life.

All that said, it was an undoubted perk of his rank that no Prince, however dubious or outright dastardly his character, was ever suspected of nefarious schemes when found out doing things that no lesser personage would be permitted. Being a Prince was a passport to doing very much whatever one wished when it came to scrabbling about other people’s residences and spying on their private papers, which, after he had assured himself that the girls – for after the display of passion for chocolate he could think of them no other way – were safely detained, quietly talking, muted candlelight stuttering under Elsa’s door, was what he had it in mind to do.

He would locate the contract, which he assumed was kept in the escritoire or the safeboxes in Agdar’s suite, and he also had other business there which he anticipated would detain him some several hours.

To his delight, Agdar’s private study was dominated by an escritoire of Roentgens design, and while he had not seen the very piece before, his mother had something so similar, of which he had made so utterly free for the last few years, he felt confident of finding all he needed in short order. And indeed, the Arendellian copy of his marriage contract - which now he reflected on it, should be freely available to him as one of the major parties to it – was tidily stowed in the safebox released by the hidden mechanism behind the little Harlequin; and the documents dealing with the rights of succession and age of competence were directly beneath.

Forgery was not one of Hans’ favourite pastimes, but it had its uses, and as such he had devoted many hours of study to it; had attained something of an expert knowledge of types and weights of paper, watermarking, ink, removal of ink, replacement and ageing of papers and so forth. Sadly this would involve the re-scribing of an entire sheet, but no more; and having anticipated these needs and sourced the requisite tools, he set to work. 

He retired to his chambers some hours later, fingers a little inky and a little ashy and head a little fatigued, but with the sense of a worthwhile task completed.

 

Hans arrived to breakfast earlier than he would have preferred, having ascertained from the servant that the Pastor usually did not eat with the family in the morning. He would be already at his prayers, the servant assured him. Queen Idun had of late years often attended service before breakfast, and many of the staff did likewise, even in her absence.

Thanking God for small mercies, he found his appetite much restored, and feasted in solitary splendour on kedgeree and coffee. He was feeling much more in charity with the world when Anna appeared, and they had some desultory conversation about where Elsa might be, and how they had eaten a great many of the chocolates before they had retired last night. Hans assumed that this indicated they had finished the box entirely and were lucky to have escaped horrible stomachache, which he told her.

“No, no – we never have had stomach ache from chocolate. Once, from sweets, we assuredly did – well, I did; of course Elsa was more sensible. It was at Christmas, and there were simply too many good things, so I had to eat some of them all, and then I thought I was dying, but I didn’t, so all was well after all. I have most strictly limited myself to chocolate and gingerbreads since.” There was something nearly inspiring about Anna’s glorious refusal to truly learn anything from what she sailed into by reason of her passions. She was a strangely stark contrast to Elsa, so busily distilling all her experience into lessons that she could hardly move for rules.

“Have you seen your sister this morning?”

“No, she bolted before I woke up.”

“Oh, you stayed with her?”

“There was another layer of chocolates,” Anna smiled.

The steward was also in search of Elsa. She had covered her tracks carefully, though, and was not in any of what Anna claimed to be her usual haunts. Hans enquired whether anybody had tried her unusual haunts, observing that to date the Princess’s unusual habits were her most marked. “Is there any reason to require her presence?”

The Steward, rubbed his hands together and bowed again – presumably while thinking what to say – and then, face corrugated with anxiety, proceeded.

“Your Highness – your own country’s fleet is in sight of the towers at the mouth of the Fjord. The flagship is flying the Royal colours; it seems a kind of state visit from your family is in train, but we have had no warning –“

“Delightful surprise!” smiled Hans. “To congratulate us on our formal return, no doubt. You are right to search for the Princess, of course; although she will be rather busier than you anticipate. I have arranged for her to review the Arendellian Guard and Navy this morning.”

Seldom had Hans felt so supremely pleased with himself. His family might think half a dozen ships would inspire fear in this small country, but from the information of which he had made himself master both before the flight from his homeland and since his arrival here, were they to arrive in the midst of a military review, the boot was quite on the other foot. Arendelle’s natural defences were augmented by a small but solid standing army, and a disproportionately large navy designed to protect her extensive and increasing sea trade.

However, to find Elsa became a matter of urgency. The review was scheduled to begin before noon, and she must be both dressed – preferably splendidly – and prepared.

He instructed the Steward to engage the servants in the search and to send to him in his rooms when she was found.

“I hope you will accompany us, Your Highness?” he said to Anna. 

“Gosh, really? That would be – excessively amusing. Shall I wear my best frock?”

“The most formal gown you have, which is warm enough to answer the purpose. It is a clear day, but there was considerable frost in the night.”

Anna nodded, and tripped off to array herself. 

Passing Elsa’s room, Hans felt a singular drop in temperature and drew an inescapable conclusion, and knocked on the door. 

“Elsa?” No reply. He spoke softly. “Elsa, I wish a word with you.” Still no reply. “Elsa, I am going to come in, if I can.” He tried the door; it opened; he pushed at it, finding something in the way. Something was removed. He went carefully in. 

The Princess had plainly just stood up - Hans speculated she had been huddled against the door, for she was turning to open it for him. She looked wretched; her face blankly white, drained of feeling, suddenly aged to ancience by its lack of any emotion. She could have been a hundred years old, or an immortal.

He realised the cause, stepping forward to take her hands, which she yielded, but shaking her head and keeping her eyes downcast. He could feel the cold through the gloves he noticed she had found out and put back on.

“You went and found it?” he asked. A nod. She spoke very low.

“Anna was still asleep. I had to know. And now I do.” She gave a half-shrug. Her next words were a whisper. “How they must hate me.”

“No. I don’t believe they hate you, Elsa. But they don’t understand you. They are afraid of you.” She looked up at him, frowning, half calculating behind her blank, shocked grief.

“You are not afraid of me.” He shook his head.

“Never.” And then she murmured, as though she was thinking aloud, 

“It must be you, then.” He raised her hand to his lips; she pulled it free and put her arms around his neck, whispering, “What will become of me?”

“I will love you and you will be my beautiful, perfect wife, and nobody will dare to criticise you,” he replied, in a tone that he recognised was slightly dark. He held her closely for a moment or two, and then gently unwound her arms from his neck and held her hands again. “We have immediate matters to deal with. My family is apparently paying a state visit – happily just as I have requested a Royal Review of the forces. You must prepare yourself to be seen, my love, in less than an hour.”

“Your family? Who?”

“I don’t know, but there are six ships and the flagship is flying the Royal Colours. Perhaps only Torsten, but possibly the Queen as well. We must not appear in disarray.” 

Grateful for the distraction, Elsa took a deep breath and arranged her features in a humourless smile of agreement. 

“Look for me in the library in twenty minutes. I will not be late.”

 

Elsa was true to her word; impressive in white and blue and gold, she looked more than faintly ethereal; her pallor and dignity made her more impressive than her seventeen years. She had the look of somebody in rather poor health, who was rising above it. It would have to do. Drawing her hand through his arm, and delegating the escort of his sister in law to Dolph, he talked quietly to her of what would be expected, and of how she should be observed.

The Arendellian public was out in full force and, he judged, festive dress, to celebrate the homecoming of their heir apparent and her husband, and Elsa’s impact on them was exactly as it had been on the Court of the Southern Isles. They were impressed by her beauty, and won over by her youth and determination to do right. By the end of a fifty yard walkabout, she had them entirely devoted. Any scrap of their hearts not won over was given up to her lively, still-childlike sister’s joyous chatter and their handsome escorts. The Princess had brought home somebody who gazed adoringly at her and answered questions with charm and intelligence, and nobody could expect her to do more.

The inspection of the standing army was even more successful, as Elsa gave orders – rather sharply – for the improvement of housing for the new recruits, many of whom were far from home. The Sergeant Major expressed an opinion that they were grubby and runtish and should not merit the concern of a Princess, to which she retorted that the willingness to give up one’s life for one’s country was a virtue measured by its actions, not the inches of the actor.

By the time of the meeting with the Navy, the Empress of the Southern Isles, as her Navy’s flagship was known, had drawn into the outskirts of the harbour, prevented from closer approach by the Arendellian Fleet which was already at dock, scrubbed and polished and festooned with flags, awaiting inspection.

“They have arrived with immaculate timing,” whispered Hans to Elsa, standing on the deck of the warship as they “We have parried the blow, thanks to Dolph’s warning. “

Elsa looked a little frightened for a moment; having seen the contract, she could not imagine any reason for a visit from the Southern Isles that did not constitute a threat to herself, although Hans had told her about the many, many thousands of gold crowns that Augusta had secreted to herself; he had remarked that perhaps she was come to return them to either himself or her treasury.

Meanwhile, Hans had the ship run up a flag greeting, inviting the chief personages of the ship to come aboard and join them for the inspection. The Empress ran up a flag greeting agreeing to dine on board with them, and within a very short time Hans had the pleasure of observing both his mother and Torsten being lowered in a dinghy to be rowed to the ship. Neither was particularly dressed for travel; his mother was robed in something largely gold, and his brother had picked velvet, which never survived a cold sea voyage with an air of freshness, he had observed.

“My dear children!” Augusta greeted them, coming forward and taking Elsa’s hands. “Hans, I have been severely put about by these rumours that have reached me of your taking a bullet to the neck. Is there any truth in it?”

“Every word. However, it was an accident; Dolph shooting at night again, you know.”

“Adolphus?” Dolph smiled at his mother.

“Accident. Thought he was a snipe.”

“Or an owl.”

“This, Mama la Reine, is my sister, Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Arendelle,” interrupted Elsa. “It is an unexpected pleasure to see you here – and so soon.”

“You could not have expected me to be restful, not knowing where you might have gone, and having only Adolphus’s very odd account of matters.” 

“It was profoundly simple,” Elsa returned. “My husband thought me no longer safe in the Southern Isles, and took steps to assure my safety. I cannot think he did anything but what was perfectly right, and I am deeply in his debt for his protection.”

“I am distressed that you should consider your safety so uncertain in my country; my dear, I wish you will reconsider your decision and return.”

Elsa widened her eyes to indicate astonishment.

“I must now await my parents’ return here, Ma’am. They are expected within the month. I can make no plans until I have spoken with them. You are of course welcome to the best of our poor hospitality until that time. My husband is already proving adept at contriving - all things.” And she cast him a glowing look of adoration just as clearly for his mother’s benefit as her repeated reference to him as “my husband” rather than by his name or title. She could not have marked her property with any more clarity short of writing it on his face, and the result of this on his mother’s face was a delight to see.

Her refusal to do as Augusta told her was equally heartening. Elsa was unbending when she believed herself in the right, and here she had business with her parents which she would not permit his mother’s presence or demands to interfere with.

They accordingly were joined by Augusta and Torsten and some of their entourage in the castle for the afternoon, where they talked and the ladies embroidered or played chess, cards being such anathema to the Pastor, who had joined them.

It was while they were busy with such leisurely pursuits, that the Master of Horse appeared. He looked scruffy by comparison with Court people, but he had a solid straightforwardness about him that would make them suffer by comparison. 

“Your Highness – the pigeon has returned from the Arendellian. She was in a poor way, and we have only just found her in the dovecote. She bore this message, Ma’am.” He handed her a small-folded, water-stained scrap of paper.

Elsa read it, and a small frown appeared on her forehead. She appeared to read it over. 

“I cannot make it out. Hans, help me.” He took the paper from her shaking hand. It bore the small seal that Agdar doubtless wore on his ring. It was horribly easy to read. 

HRH Princess Elsa of Arendelle

My Beloved Daughter

We have encountered a storm at sea – the ship is in danger – we are too far from land to hope for rescue. Unless you hear from us swiftly after this, you must assume the duties you have been bred to. Our love by this to you and your sister – Agdar & Idun.

 

“I don’t think it can be right,” Elsa murmured, sounding strangely distant.

“It bears his seal, Elsa. I believe it to carry his dying wishes.” She continued to shake her head, as if she hoped something in it would click into place and the world would start to work again. Hans turned to the company. “It is from the King of Arendelle.” He read it aloud, then turned to Elsa, knelt before her and declared the words.

“The King and Queen are dead. Long live the Queen.”

The company imitated Hans, kneeling down and repeating the words, “Long Live the Queen,” even Anna. Elsa’s eyes roved over them without sight. She was not standing quite straight. Hans stood up and took her elbow. She was shaking like a greyhound.

“My poor, poor child. You must be distraught,” said Augusta, making to come to her. Elsa shrank into Hans’ side, away from her mother in law.

“You are kind, cousin; this is indeed a hardship unlooked for,” managed Elsa.

“So soon, my dear, you are so young to lose both parents – and in such an accident.”

“Dammit, the country’ll be reelin’. You’ve just got back, the King’s dead and now there will have to be a regent appointed. It’s a shockin’ mess,” declared Torsten, never noticeable for his delicacy and not departing from his habit now.

“I am Queen,” said Elsa, but her voice was weak.

“You are not yet eighteen; surely for the next year there must surely be a regency in place,” Augusta told her. “You cannot be expected to take up the reins of power so young. You must have time to mourn and to grow into your kingdom.”

“I must rule.” She seemed to be like a mechanism which is failing; for the first time Hans feared her; he feared that perhaps her reason might be overset by the series of shocks that the day had brought upon her. 

“There will be precedent, and no doubt your parents Will, indicating what they wish in this case,” assured Augusta. “We will render every assistance.”

“What the King’s Will was, is shown very clearly in his last message,” Hans told his mother curtly, “which I will take care to have witnessed here and now by this company.”

“The King is dead, and his will cannot be held in defiance of tradition or of the laws of the land,” cut in Pastor Nylund. “She is not yet of age, and until eighteen, she cannot rule in her own right.” Elsa was frowning at him, shaking her head still.

“I disagree, but I am sure the Royal Archive will clarify the matter.”

“Traditionally the age of regal responsibility in Arendelle is twenty one,” added the Pastor. Hans knew that perfectly well; he had been up half the night amending the private documents dealing with the Regency; the Acts of Council were a matter of public record, and he could not interfere with them, but the dicscretionary part – that of the age of assumption of full royal duties – he had corrected on all the decrees he could find. Elsa’s trembling had not abated, but her breath was coming less steadily, more stertorously; he feared she was about to collapse in some kind of fit, and nothing could be more deleterious to her prospects.

“And the traditional regent would be your Mother, but as alas, she is lost too, I can step into the breach,” offered Augusta kindly. Elsa stared at her, eyes narrowed with dislike. Her eyebrows drew together in an angle of fierce defiance.

“The council might look more kindly upon a Regent drawn from the Church,” interposed the Pastor. He inherited Elsa’s angry look, of which he remained oblivious, as he was looking sharply at Augusta.

“Until the Council is called, perhaps we should refrain from speculation,” offered Hans. “The Princess – the Queen is in need of rest and reflection on these matters, I believe. Ma’am, I will escort you upstairs.” Hans took Elsa’s arm and supported her to the door, not a moment too soon; hardly had they passed the threshold than her chin jerked up and her head back, she went rigid as though she were being pulled up by a string through her sternum, and he felt a jolt of – something like electricity – from her.

The sensation was altogether most like those he had experienced when he was shot, but it felt like it must be inside his ribs somewhere. 

She was stiff and cold like a dying creature, and helping her was difficult because of it. 

As he returned to the hall from her chambers, he felt an icy coldness in him at the fight that he must now engage in, and win against both his mother and the Pastor. He was over eighteen, after all, and she was his wife. But he feared that his mother might have at least some precedent on her side, and of course, the age that Elsa should inherit was unhelpfully also the one at which she should become his wife in truth. He gathered his thoughts and lifted his chin; he would go in and he would negotiate with the utmost suavity and firmness for himself and Elsa, but the truth was he would have preferred his bed, and an eiderdown, to ward off the chill.


	14. Cold Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter, which deals with the Cold and the Regency

In the hall where they awaited the gathering of the council, it was plain that the first order of business was to dismiss the Religious. Hans assumed – correctly - that this could safely be left to his mother.

“Reverend Nylund, although our most gracious thanks must ever be yours for the many services rendered the Arendellian Crown, it is very plain that for the well-being of the realm, a political ally, like the Southern Isles, is the ideal candidate for the Regent. The advantages, both economic and political, of a military and naval force like ours in supporting a small country in a time of transition cannot be overstated. And we must beg for your voice in this. As well,” she added, drawing to his side, and lowering her voice, “our own homeland has need of spiritual counsel. We have had terrible trouble with directives from the Church of Rome.” They exchanged significant looks, and his mother raised her head a touch, seeking some confirmation of the Pastor’s capitulation.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he conceded. _Well, maybe they would deal extremely together. Or maybe his mother would have him sent to Rome to discuss those problems for a few winters. _He wished he was in Italy for this winter; it was perishing cold in this castle.__

__“And now I must implore some time alone with my sons. No doubt the Princess wishes to console her sister, and I too, need the comfort of my family around me for a short while, at such a difficult time.” With equally unctuous smiles on both sides, the Pastor withdrew, followed by Anna and the courtiers, and Hans prepared for battle with his mother. He had had to escape from her so often throughout his life, and even flight to another country where he had every right to be King seemed not to dismay her._ _

__It was time to be direct in his explanations, so he opened without preamble:_ _

__“I intend to stand Regent to my wife, Ma’am, and it is as well you know it soon as late.”_ _

__“I had surmised you might, my son.” She looked unusually affable. “But your intentions are unlikely to be fulfilled. You are but twenty, when all’s said.”_ _

__“That argument will avail you nothing, since eighteen is the age of discretion in both Arendelle and the Southern Isles,” he rejoined._ _

__“Is it really? I seem to recall it is generally twenty-one for girls in Arendelle.”_ _

__“Another argument that is hardly germane when I am the subject.”_ _

__“But it is germane to the length of the Regency itself.”_ _

__“I see no reason why a woman who is old enough to bear a child is young enough to be treated as one. When she is eighteen, Elsa will take up the reins of governance with all the certainty that is her birthright.”_ _

__“Perhaps we should be candid with one another,” suggested Augusta. Hans smiled. He looked forward mightily to her showing him the way. “We are alike, you and I, however much you wish it otherwise. I am certain you have a far more intimate knowledge of the reasons for the loss of the Arendellian – so unfortunately with all hands! – than you will admit.”_ _

__“That’s a shocking insinuation,” he replied, raising his eyebrows. “There is some distance between candour and confession to uncommitted crimes.” He helped himself to a drink. He needed it to warm him; this room was unaccountably chill this evening._ _

__“Not in all cases,” returned his mother. “And I am quite certain that it is so. More to the point, I suspect I could convince the incumbent queen that it is so. A coup d’etat, Hans. However, I don’t feel that necessary. I also assume you are aware of the terms of your marriage contract.”_ _

__“They seemed pertinent.”_ _

__“Indeed. So you will be aware that what you have done has been very much against the interests of your homeland.”_ _

__“No, Ma’am, only what you judge to be against the interests of my homeland. Marital alliance with Arendelle would be worth a great deal more to us than the sums they were willing to disburse even for Elsa’s death or cure, and over a longer period of time. This is a country which good governance and a proper programme of industrial improvement could transform in a generation, and the Southern Isles could benefit from every stage of that.”_ _

__“Hans, you have acted against our interests when you took Elsa away, and that is an act of – perhaps treasonous intent.”_ _

__“How do you imagine the contract that suggests you will do away with the heir apparent might be perceived after the assumption of ruling powers by that heir apparent?”_ _

__Augusta’s face opened in astonishment._ _

__“Does she – does Elsa know? Has she read the contract?”_ _

__“Indeed.”_ _

__“Did you reveal it to her? Did you show her the contract?”_ _

__“Certainly not. In fact, I went to considerable trouble to preserve her from the knowledge of its contents. This is her own country, however; of which she is now head of state. Even had I succeeded in hiding it from her – which I maintain would have been an effrontery of which no true Prince should be capable – the exposure of its contents to her would now be inevitable.” His mother leveled a narrow-eyed look at him. He found he was shivering, but hardly supposed that it was as a result of his mother's unkind expression._ _

__“The more I listen to you, Hans, the more immovable my conviction that you were responsible for the sinking of that ship. It is all too smoothly contrived, together with Elsa’s knowledge of the Contract and your ready enthusiasm for assuming the Regency.”_ _

__“You are of course allowed to assume what you wish. But your assumption does not make any of it true. What is provably true, is that you have conspired, with the late King, to dispose of the currently ruling monarch – a queen to whom the entire Arendellian guard are at this very moment swearing allegiance. Regency or no.”_ _

__The moment, which should have been one of unshadowed triumph, was marred by a sudden deadness about his hands and feet, and a heavy feeling of fatigue. Far from staring his mother down, Hans was forced to take a seat on the chaise longue and sip at his drink. His hand felt ridiculously heavy. He lowered the glass to the side table, missing the height of it and putting it down a half-inch above it with a glassy clatter._ _

__“Are you unwell?” asked Dolph, crossing to him. Hans shook his head, trying to shake off the feeling of exhaustion and Dolph’s hand at the same time._ _

__“This must be settled, Dolph. I have no time to be well or unwell. The Regency will fall to the Queen’s Consort, as it should. We will not be treated as children.”_ _

__“Is that the Royal we, Hanschen?” sniped his mother._ _

__“I believe it must be,” he said, with the ghost of a smile at her. He felt positively hypothermic, instead of warmer; perhaps he was falling ill. But he had no time for it; for this short space of time he must remain awake and alert. He renewed his determination, and realized that he must have taken a moment away from the scene, as Dolph held him by one arm, and had his hand pressed to his face._ _

__“You are ill, Hanschen; you are as cold as ice. This cannot be continued. Mother, you must allow him to rest, immediately. Dear God, his hair has gone white with the worry.” Hans decided Dolph was joking, although it seemed in poor taste when he was so ill, and opted out of further interaction by losing consciousness again._ _

__“Take him to his chamber directly.”_ _

__Hans came to himself sufficiently in the hallway to make some feeble protest, but it was too weak; Dolph muttered self-reproaches that the bullet wound was clearly worsening, and that he must be seen by a doctor at once, dragging him upstairs._ _

__As soon as he was gone, Augusta demanded writing materials be brought to her without delay. She wrote a strong, clear hand, with emphatic angles and energetic diagonals, not entirely dissimilar to her son’s._ _

__

__To Her Gracious Majesty, Elsa, Queen of Arendelle_ _

_Your Majesty_

__It is with the deepest and most heartfelt regret that I must take my leave of you._ _

__Our marriage, such as it is, must be regarded hereafter as a noble attempt that has ended in failure.  
My health will not permit me to take up the Regency, which my mother offers to fulfill in my stead, and  
I do not believe I will live long enough to rule at your side. 

__My family will conduct me to my birthplace that my lying in state and burial will be on my native soil._ _

__I am so very sorry, Elsa, that it has ended like this._ _

__Yours ever_ _

__

__HRH Hans Westergard, Prince of the Southern Isles etc_ _

__

__The letter was sealed, and instructions given that it should be delivered to Elsa at the first opportunity the next morning._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very late and very short and no update next week as I am Away From My Computer. I hope to post the final episode on the Sunday after, when I will have writing time.


	15. Blue Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elsa takes things in hand.

“Wake up! Elsa you must get up! I can’t open the door!”

 

The vigourous rattling and agitation of the handle bore witness to the truth of this statement, as Elsa faltered towards consciousness. She had not slept much, and what sleep she had had was indistinguishable from dreams; troubling and confusing and overwhelming. 

She was not at all refreshed, and longed for sleep more than anything, but she was relieved in another way to find that it was time to give up the struggle for it and haul herself into activity.

The room, however, suggested otherwise, swagged from curtains to floor to door with ice shards, spaces between spiderwebbed with frozen snow. The windows were nearly obscured – Elsa had been in no state to close the curtains – and the door completely immovable.

“Anna?” she mumbled. “I have had – awful dreams. It’s – “ she had no words to explain what the state of the room was, how it had spiraled, seemingly of its own will, into a storm of confusion and become the after wreck of an ice blizzard at some point during her restless night of wretchedness and rejection. The only comfort she could cling to was that this had not happened when she was truly asleep; although she was unaffected by the environs of a chamber which now resembled nothing so much as an expedition to the Arctic, she merely slept through her own strange weather, and did not unconsciously form it, any more than she sleepwalked. She supposed distantly that if she had been given to somnambulism she would have been put out of everybody’s misery a long time ago, particularly after what she had read in the Contract of Arrangement.

“You should have had awful dreams, Elsa. I have been downstairs to breakfast, and Pastor Nylund is sitting there with that dreadful mother of Hans’s, and they are carving up our lives a great deal worse than Papa did. You must come down, Elsa, you must!”

Elsa’s attention was caught; she struggled out of her bed and to her wardrobe; she selected the first dress that came to hand, changed her mind, and took the darkest one in there. 

“Anna – I’m dressing – but I haven’t anything black – have you a ribbon or something?”

“I have Mama’s veils and some black gloves. They will have to do; this is a matter of too great an urgency.”

“What has become of Hans? Does he not take my – our – part?” Elsa asked, pulling the sleeves up over her shoulders and having to wriggle to get them fitted. “Stand away from the door; I must open it, and my – natural abilities – have not been lying idle. At least two yards, Anna, and not in its direct path.”  
“Doors do not have paths,” objected Anna, but she retreated as she was told.

“Are you away?” Receiving an affirmative reply, Elsa dropped her shoulders and raised her hands. She could not be sure what amount of power she had at her disposal, so she started willing herself to cast only a small nudge of force at the door, and realized, surprised, that she could feel it. She could feel the resistance of the door against her just as plainly as if she were truly touching it. She pushed at it, testing the strength of her power and of the door, and then flung her right hand out in front of her with a twist as if she were throwing it – and saw what she had felt become manifest; a jagged spiraling shard of ice leapt forward from her fingers, shaped into a spear, spread into a starry jolt of zigzagging spikes, drilling at and into and across the door until – with a creaking split – it gave up the fight, blasted neatly into a mess of scarred and shredded oak.

Anna gasped, gathering herself up into a bundle of caution.

“You could have melted it, couldn’t you?”

Elsa shook her head. “I simply don’t know how. Hans and I have talked about it, but – I don’t seem to have that power. It seems a little ridiculous, I know.” Anna was peaking into the chamber.

“It’s very elegant, Elsa. Like a pleasure garden of snow. But weren’t you cold?” Elsa shrugged and smiled, apologetic. Anna shrugged too, looking like a child accepting the impossible as a matter of course.

“Can you fasten my dress? It’s ridiculously – “ Again Elsa was driven to shrug, before turning her back so she could have her dress fastened. She gazed at the floor, unseeing, as Anna hooked her up.

“Goodness, it was quite the escape from Hans’ homeland, to have to get away without even having time to bring your dresser,” observed Anna. 

“I didn’t have a dresser,” said Elsa, wonderingly. 

“But how did you dress?”

“A girl came in the morning – when I had to ready myself for breakfast. It wasn’t the same girl often, though. And on the boat it was _even worse. _I had nobody to help me when we were about to meet MamaPapa and I had to ask this – well, he must have been a cabin boy. He was the only person who wasn’t old enough to – be unsuitable. But still, I was thinking when I saw her, how very shocked that Mama would have been, had she been aware that this very grubby little powder monkey had looked upon my back.”__

__“Mama is easily shocked,” replied Anna, in a worldly way, hooking up the last fastener and patting Elsa’s shoulder to tell her she’d done. A moment passed before she caught herself. “Or was, I suppose. Do you think they are really gone?”_ _

__Elsa turned slowly._ _

__“We must behave as if they are, Anna, or the whole of the kingdom will be in ruins long before I come of age. Augusta – really cannot be trusted.”_ _

__They hastened off. Anna seized her sister’s hand, hurrying her down the staircase, handing her black gloves and a veil as they went._ _

__

__The scene in the breakfast parlour was as Anna had indicated; Her Serene Majesty was drinking coffee from a dainty china cup, exuding all the air of one who owned that cup and every other item in the room, Pastor Nylund included. Elsa felt the anger inside her well up dark and inchoate, like evil itself, and clenched her black gloved hands to keep it in. Augusta, she noticed, adding to the insult, was still richly and vibrantly clad in glowing gold. No sign of mourning was added to any part of her dress._ _

__“My dear girls!” she greeted them. “Come and eat a little; you must keep your strength up.”_ _

__Anna curtsied; Elsa’s eyes were fixed on Augusta with no sign of softness or courtesy._ _

__“Good morning, Mama la Reine. Is my husband still in his bed?”_ _

__“I must suppose so, Mignonne,” replied Augusta, showing that she could give as good as she got if Elsa chose to be Frenchified._ _

__“I will send for him directly. The issues surrounding our rule must be immediately resolved.”_ _

__“Dear child! They have already been resolved, as you put it. Hans left a note for you – it will certainly explain some things –“ Augusta rose and rang the bell, directing the servant to bring Prince Hans’ note for the Queen._ _

__Elsa took it, watching Augusta as she unfolded it. It was unsealed, which surprised her. Hans had a seal ring on his little finger; she remembered him using it to dispatch her letters with the greater celerity after she had been distraught not knowing how to get them franked. Hans was a complete cynic about Augusta; he would not trust a letter intended for herself with his mother unsealed._ _

__She scanned the lines quickly, handing the note on to Anna._ _

__“I find none of this satisfactory. I must see my husband at once.”_ _

__“I fear that will be impossible. He has already left for the ship.”_ _

__“Setting aside the fact, Ma’am, that only the most unnatural parent could send her son in a state of illness on a long sea voyage which must surely hurry his demise, as well as depriving his last days of what small comfort he might have, I am compelled to inform you that Hans has no right to his own decisions in such a sort. He is married to the Head of State of Arendelle; he is my husband now, and that much less your son. He will die and be buried on Arendellian soil.”_ _

__“Nothing can be done,” smiled Augusta. “You have read his words yourself.”_ _

__“I do not believe so,” sneered Elsa. Anna looked in shocked appreciation at her sister. She had never seen her so thoroughly terrifying. “I will go to him now and ascertain the truth in person.”_ _

__“The ship should have sailed by now,” rejoined Augusta calmly._ _

__“Accompany me, please, your Majesty. I will show you it has not.”_ _

__Amused, Augusta dabbed imaginary coffee drops from her lips and put down her napkin, inclining her head in acceptance, and the four of them – for Pastor Nylund seemed inexplicably to believe himself comprehended in Elsa’s invitation – made their way out onto the castle’s dock._ _

__The flagship of the Southern Isles was still in place – but moving slowly away from them, almost far enough to round the point, was one of the escort ships, clearly an hour’s sailing away._ _

__“You observe?” said Augusta._ _

__“I do,” Elsa responded, walking carefully down the stone steps that led to the water._ _

__At the very water’s edge, unable to take one more step without wetting her feet under the swell, she lifted the hem of her skirt to keep it dry, and her foot as though to take a step into the fjord. But she did not step: she stamped. She brought her foot down like a small soft slippered hammer, and under it the water seized and froze into solidity. Under Augusta’s astonished and dismayed eyes, as Elsa walked forward onto the water, it petrified, white and opaque and deep under each step, and then the freeze began to shoot forward, sweeping and surging through the water like a wave of winter, immobilizing the ships in the harbour, icing up their planks so they looked repainted in crystal lace, and pursuing the ship that bore Hans back to his homeland until it reached it and – when Elsa was less than ten yards from the dock – the ship stopped moving, surrounded by ice._ _

__Elsa turned to Augusta, smiling a little._ _

__“Do you?”_ _

__The Royal Stables were directed to send out a sled for the Regent immediately, Elsa dissembling a little about the surprisingly abrupt cold snap that had resulted in such a solid freeze, but demanded the moment be seized and the Prince returned without further discussion._ _

__“But what will you do?” whispered Anna._ _

__“I must save him, Anna. I owe it to him because he saved my life, and as Regent he is much to be preferred to his mother.”_ _

__Anna acquiesced; Augusta had launched into a long disquisition on the hopelessness of Hans’ health and the impossibility of his taking the regency, no word of which Elsa believed, and had added that since the Regency would last only a year, she hardly knew what Elsa was making such a fuss over. Elsa, listening to her with half her mind only, still heard enough to be surprised by Augusta’s effrontery. She questioned whether anyone in the world would not be making a fuss over relinquishing their liberty to somebody who wished their death._ _

__At length they could make out the figures huddled up on the sled, muffled in furs, and shortly the sounds of the sled were audible, the spattering hard patter of the dogs’ feet and the encouragement of the driver, and a few minutes later they finally drew to a halt by the stone jetty._ _

__Elsa ran down, relief lightening her feet as much as her heart, until she saw Hans and halted. What his mother had told her was true. Hans was still alive, but barely._ _

__His skin had a ghastly pallor, his complexion was almost blue and his hair had gone nearly white. Augusta, who had seen the beginning of his condition, blanched at the grisly sight of him, and Anna was motionless with consternation, her hand moving to cover her mouth._ _

__Dolph was wretched, his arm only supporting his brother from sliding to the floor of the sled in a dead faint, his expression wracked with guilt. But for Elsa, the sight was worse, for she knew, as soon as she saw his want of colour, the deathly hue of his skin, that his injury might quite well be mortal, and that it was of her infliction. She knew that she had struck him, just as she had Anna, and that she had no knowledge of how to undo the hurt she had wrought._ _

__She darted forward and took his hand; he was fully as cold as he looked._ _

__“Hans! You are so cold – I have to take you to the Valley – I am so very sorry.”_ _

__“Elsa? What?” asked Hans. His eyes felt very heavy – in fact, he felt leaden with cold all over, and could barely move. He moved his face to smile, suspected he was failing because it felt like stirring porridge, and squeezed her hand. “You sent for me. Thank you.”_ _

__“Oh, Hans. You shouldn’t thank me. It’s my fault, I struck you – last night, when I was so upset – I couldn’t control it.”_ _

__“If I am an unnatural parent, Your Highness would seem to be an equally unnatural wife,” remarked Augusta._ _

__“I am a force of nature,” retorted Elsa sharply. “And I did not send him away to die at sea, when he might at least be kindly cared for.”_ _

__“Dragging him off to some valley northwards would scarcely seem caring.”_ _

__“I will do all I can to save him, and I will succeed. You will not rule in Arendelle, Your Majesty. Your own country has need of you.”_ _

__“But this is my duty, Your Highness. My son entrusted your regency to me. You saw the note.” Augusta clearly believed her son closer on death’s door than he was, for Hans raised his head at this and said clearly,_ _

__“I didn’t write you a note, Elsa.”_ _

__“How can you trust him? You must suspect, at least, that he had a hand in what happened to your parents?" After momentarily being led to hope somewhere inside his acute state of cold, that Elsa would indeed be able to best his mother, Hans heard this accusation as the death of all hope. His mother was right on all counts; for he was her son._ _

__“I don’t believe a word from your lips and if it were true, I shouldn’t care a rap for it.” Hans heard the words and was dumbfounded. He did not believe she had said it, he did not believe she believed it._ _

__“If I am to credit that, I must think you a fool.”_ _

__“No, I have stopped being a fool, because I have understood what I never did before; that I am too frightening for anybody to wish me well, even my own father and mother. I would not have hurt them for the world, but they were willing to let me be hurt, just as you are willing to let Hans die._ _

__You mistake our marriage, Your Majesty, if you imagine it to be something you can undermine at this late stage. Hans cannot return to the Southern Isles because he and I are – closer - than he is, or can be, to any of his other flesh and blood. We are one flesh.”_ _

__Anna’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. Augusta’s sardonic glance flicked over her, observing her shock but misinterpreting its source. Anna was amazed to hear Elsa telling a bare faced lie. Elsa never lied. Until this very moment, Anna had supposed her to be quite incapable of it._ _

__“Hans? Is this a fact? Did you betray your country and your family exactly as she claims?” How I meant to, he thought, and decided that it was best to let Elsa run the scene as she wanted._ _

__“I’m a Westergard. We do bad things.” The double meaning was not lost on Augusta, and it did not please her. He earned a hard look from her, one unleavened with sympathy for his indifferent state of health. Her momentary distraction allowed Elsa to continue uninterrupted._ _

__“I am not unfamiliar with the necessities of rule. But when we Arendellians take a step, however ill advised, or indeed against one’s own preferred moral code, we stick by it. And any Arendellian, high born or low, would surely scorn to abandon his own wife and child. Hans will be my regent, and I will save him. You may wait his renewed health on your ship if you wish; I suppose it will not be in any great hurry now. Perhaps the Pastor should accompany you. – Dolph, you will stay with us.”_ _

__Augusta stepped towards the sled, Hans supposed to remonstrate further with his wife – but she was stopped abruptly by a sharp hedge of icicles. “I will not negotiate, Mama in law.” And swiftly, puzzlingly, Elsa seemed to have got him out of the sled, bundled him up and enforced his mother – perhaps by main force of will, for there were no further demonstrations of snow or ice – to get into it in his stead, to be escorted back to her flagship._ _

__The Queen’s departure – or something - made him feel decidedly better. Warmth and motion seemed to be returning to his limbs. A feeling of comfortable fluidity in his movements animated him. Dolph supported him up the steps to the dock, and into the castle, where he was seated on a sofa and a tankard of something hot and strongly scented with spice placed in his hands. He drank, gratefully, before realizing that he was the subject of intense silent scrutiny from the other three._ _

__He looked an enquiry at them._ _

__“Your hair, you know,” Dolph attempted._ _

__“When you were in the sled, when you arrived, it was completely white – you know, the way people’s hair is supposed to be when they are shocked and wake up the next day with all the colour fallen out,” explained Anna. “But it seems to be turning back remarkably quickly.”_ _

__“I am improving every minute,” he agreed. “Do we have any notion of the cause?” He looked to Elsa. She was watching him, observing his improvement. In a sudden rush of movement, she was upon him, her hands touching first his hands and then his face and his hair, gauging his temperature, then lingering to tangle her fingers in his._ _

__“I have no idea,” she murmured. “But I am so glad, Hans, so very glad.” She was smiling at him, as though she wasn’t able to stop, and wasn’t able to look away._ _

__“How do you feel apart from glad?”_ _

__“I think I feel happy. I feel that all is right and that we shall be well.”_ _

__“I believe that may be why, Elsa, you have undone whatever you laid on me. You stopped freezing things by accident when you decided to trust me.”_ _

__She looked long at him, thinking over what he had said. “No. Not trust. I feel certain I shall always have to keep a close eye on your activities. Only I don’t care that I shall. You are like Anna; I love you and it can’t be undone.” She reflected further on it, her hand still in his. “I can control it, then.”_ _

__Standing up, she crossed the room, flung open the windows, and stepped onto the balcony, breathing in deeply the frigid blast of air that followed. “I shall send your mother on her way,” she said quietly._ _

__She stretched out her arms to the whole horizon, as if pulling it towards her, engaging the storm symptoms she had made, and then like an angel embracing the skies above her, raised her arms, lifting a scurrying whirl of twinned and rimed and toothed crystals into a dozen twisting towers, feeding up into the sky, twirling into a huge stellar six pointed fern, and blinking precipitously into non existence, leaving behind only a blue, untainted bright winter sky._ _

__“It is done. I am a little fatigued. Shall we have some lunch, and send a pigeon to bring Helena and Angelika, at least for a holiday? No doubt we can look forward to a most edifying correspondence with your mother about its duration.”_ _

__Hans stood up, offering his arm._ _

__“Why would you need to keep a close eye on me when you have so clearly thought of everything?” he asked her. She looked at him again, and was again quite unable to repress her smile._ _

__“I can’t decide. Perhaps I just wish to.”_ _

__So still smiling and still not quite telling each other the whole unvarnished truth, they went in to lunch._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all the people who left Kudos or Comments (especially Michelle, who has been v kind from the beginning) because it would have been a very long way without you to encourage me :)


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